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HELPS 



PEOMOTIOI OF EEYIYALS. 



By Rev. J. V. WATSON, D. D., 

EDITOR OP THE NORTHWESTERN CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE. 



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PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER, 



200 MULBEKRY-STREET. 
185G. 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1856, 
BY CARLTON & PORTER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern 
District of New- York. 



PREFACE. 



As our title implies, the subject-matter of this 
volume is treated rather suggestively than ex- 
hmistimly. We have aimed to set forth princi- 
ples, and left their details and applications to 
the reader. Indeed, it is too late to teach Meth- 
odist preachers how to conduct revivals, but not 
too late to help one another by our suggestions 
to bring about this most blessed condition of the 
Church in which it can exist out of heaven. 

Much of the matter of this volume has already 
appeared in the columns of the paper under the 
author's control. But for the flattering atten- 
tion which it has there excited, we might never 
have thought of giving it its present form. 
Numerous letters from highly respectable 
sources have reached us at different times, solic- 
iting its publication in a less ephemeral form 
than that of a newspaper. Yielding to the 
j^udgment of our friends, we hope the volume 



4 PREFACE. 

will do good. We the more readily make a 
book upon this subject because, so far as we are 
aware, the catalogue literature of Methodism is 
unsupplied with such a work. Albeit we would 
not forget to mention the most excellent little 
work of Kev. James Porter, D. D., which has 
had a steady sale for several years. 

The work has been prepared under disadvant- 
ages altogether peculiar, and which none but 
the author can duly appreciate. Should the 
critic here seek work, he would be apt to find 
enough to do. We hold ourself responsible not 
for its verbal accuracy, but for its doctrines 
alone. If it have merit, as we flatter ourselves 
it has, it will make its way in the world. If it 
have not, it does not deserve to. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I.— WHAT IS REYIYAL. 

THE CHURCH IN NEED OF REVIVALS — A REVIVAL NOT A IVflRACLE 

REVIVALS THE RESULT OF THE USE OF APPROPRIATE MEANS 

THE PLACE WHERE REVIVALS MUST BEGIN PRIVATE 

PRAYER AND PERSONAL EFFORT THE WORKING OF THE 

SOCIAL PRINCIPLE PAGE 11 



Chapter IL— HINDERANCES TO REYIYALS. 

WANT OF FAITH A REVIVAL FAITH DEFINED THE GOSPEL'S 

CROWNING GIFT THE MORAL MIGHT OF THE OLD REFORMERS 

THE OFFICIAL CHRISTIAN THE DIPLOMATIC CHRISTIAN 

THE PARTISAN CHRISTIAN 19 



Chapter III.— HINDERANCES TO REYIYALS. 

THE CHURCH NOT GENERALLY HATED A TACIT WANT OF FAITH 

IN HER CLAIMS A CAUSE OF MORAL OBDURACY SOCIAL CASTES 

THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS WANTING IN PERVASIVENESS 

— THE MATERIALISM OF THE POPULAR MIND 27 



Chapter IY.— HINDERANCES TO REYIYALS. 

THE PROTEAN CHARACTER OP UNBELIEF — THE VERY ELECT MAY 

BE DECEIVED INFIDELITY ASSUMING TO BE AN ANGEL OF 

LIGHT IT FINDS APOLOGY FROM THE CONDUCT OF CHRISTIANS 

AN EXAMPLE GIVEN — THE PREVALENCE OF PERVERTED SCI- 
ENCE AND PHILOSOPHY FALSELY SO CALLED MARVELOUS 

MATERIAL PROGRESS MAN'S ABUSE OF BLESSINGS AND MISIN- 
TERPRETATION OF THE PURPOSES OF THEIR BESTOWMENT — 
THE PULPIT SHOULD ADAPT ITSELF TO THE POPULAR SlIND — 
THE LOGICAL ELEMENT MORE PREDOMINANT THAN THK EMO- 
TIONAI< — OUR SUFFICIENCY OF GOD 34: 



6 CONTENTS. 

Chapter V.— HINDERANCES TO REYIYALS— PLAN OF 
RESISTANCE PROPOSED. 

GERMAN RATIONALISM — THE EMIGRATION OF ERROR — SPIRITUAI- 

ISM AND ITS COGNATES DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ETHICAL 

AND THE DOCTRINAL — A DEFECT IN THE PULPIT AN ILLUS- 
TRATION ILLUSTRATED CONCLUSION OP A LEGITIMATE RATION- 
ALISM — THE PREACHER SHOULD STUDY NATURE A PULPIT 

REFORM SUGGESTED PAGE 44 

Chapter YI.— PREACH JESUS. 

THE CENTRAL GLORY OF THE UNIVERSE — THE WORLD'S GREAT 

WANT JESUS MUST BE PREACHED, OR THE PULPIT WILL 

BECOME EXTINCT — BOSTON UNITARIANISM UNION BETWEEN 

CHRIST AND HIS MINISTERS ILLUSTRATED THE CROSS IN- 
VESTED WITH STUPENDOUS EVIDENCES MERITLESSNESS OF 

MAN'S RIGHTEOUSNESS HOW THE SINNER IS SAVED THE 

TRUE PROTESTANT IDEA HOW GOD DESCENDS TO MAN'S CA- 
PACITY THE INCARNATION CHRIST ALWAYS THE PREACHER'S 

THEME 53 

Chapter YIL— THE CLASS-MEETING. 

WORKING THE SOCIAL AND SYMPATHETIC PRINCIPLE — MAN MORE 

SOCIAL AS HE BECOMES MORE RELIGIOUS THE FOLLY OF 

ANCHORITISM THE CLASS-MEETING THE CLASS-MEETING AS 

THE 3iEANS OF CONSECRATING THE SOCIAL PRINCIPLE 

CLASS-MEETINGS SUPPLY A NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL WANT 

THEIR PHILOSOPHY ILLUSTRATED THE CONVERSATION OF THE 

CLASS-ROOM THE RECLAIMING POWER OF CLASS-MEETINGS 

IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOU 3 CONVERSATION 65 

Chapter YIII.— REYIYALS A WANT OF OUR NATURE, 
AND A NECESSITY OF THE CHURCH. 

BEFINITION OF REVIVALS — ALL HISTORY ILLUSTRATES THEIR NE- 
CESSITY — HOW THE QUESTION IS TO BE VIEWED — RELIGION 

AND NATURE TOO OFTEN DIVORCED THE CONDITION OF THE 

CHURCH WITHOUT REVIVALS — THE MORAL BEAUTY OF A RE- 
VIVAL MANIFESTATION 78 

Chapter IX.— PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 

THE ADAPTATION OF PROTRACTED MEETINGS TO OUR WANTS — 

ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY MEANS OF GRACE TAKING 

ADVANTAGE OF TIMES AND SEASONS — PASTORAL ECONOMY — 
OBJECTIONS ANSWERED , 85 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter X.-~PR0TRACTED MEETINGS. 

EXTRAVAGANT DEMONSTRATIONS — CORRECT TEACHING NEEDED — 
RELIGIOUS RESPONSES — LET ALL METHODISTS SAY "AMEN" — 

ALL CORNERS SHOULD BE "AMEN CORNERS" OBJECTIONS 

ANSWERED — THE INVETERATE FAULT-FINDER — NOTHING HU- 
MAN PERFECT — APOSTASIES IN REVIVALS THEIR OCCURRENCE 

CONSIDERED THE MORAL STATE OF THE BACKSLIDER NO 

ONE EVER MADE WORSE BY CONVERSION — THE BACKSLIDER THE 
FIRST TO BE RE-CONVERTED PAGE 93 



Chapter XI.— NECESSITY OP AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. 

A RARE BUT INSIDIOUS EVIL EXPOSED THE FEARFUL PREACHER 

HIS FEARS FOUNDED IN A FALSE PHILOSOPHY A STUNTED 

CHURCH INSTRUCT THE PEOPLE IN THE AGGRESSIVE MOVE- 
MENTS OP THE CHURCH THEY ONLY GROW STRONG BY 

BEARING BURDENS THE "QUARTER OF A DOLLAR" TYPE OF 

METHODISM SPIRITUAL BABIES AT FORTY PLANS AND PUR- 
POSES SHOULD BE LARGE REASONS WHY THE WEST HAS 

BEEN PARTICULARLY FAVORED WITH REVIVALS — THE PREACHER 

WHO WILL BE BLESSED WITH THEM A WORKING LAITY 

DETERMINES A CHURCH'S PROSPERITY DANGER OF METHOD- 
ISM BEING OUTSTRIPPED BY SISTER SECTS 103 



Chapter XII.— NURSING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 

A DISPROPORTION BETWEEN CONVERSIONS RECORDED AND ULTIMATE 

RESULTS INCREASE IN THE MEMBERSHIP IN THE YEARS 18o4:-5 

NOT FLATTERING MORE IMPORTANT TO TAKE CARE OF WHAT 

WE HAVE, THAN TO SECURE MORE AT THE NEGLECT OF THAT 

THE YOUNG CONVERT MUST BE INSTRUCTED KIND OF IN- 
STRUCTION NEEDED THE HELP PROVIDED FOR THE PASTOR 

THE CLASS-LEADER OUR CHURCH LITERATURE NECESSITY OP 

CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTION THE EXAMPLE OF THE ANCIENT 

CHURCH — OUR INCREASED FACILITIES FOR NURSING THE YOUNG 
CONVERT — LOSS TO THE ANCIENT CHURCH FOR THE WANT OP 

THE PRESS THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE POPE NECESSITY OP 

SPREADING OUR BOOKS THE YOUNG CONVERT TO BE AT ONCE 

SUPPLIED IMPORTANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS WEEKLY RELATION 

OF RELIGIOUS READING TO REVELATION — THE BIBLE ALWAYS TO 
PRECEDE, BUT NEVER SUPERSEDE THE CONSECRATED TONGUE 
AND PEN H3 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter XIII.— THE POWER OF KINDJsTESS. 

"WHAT CHRISTIAN KINDNESS IS NOT — CHRISTIAN KINDNESS DEFINED 

ERRONEOUS VIEWS CORRECTED THE ESTHETIC ELEMENT OF 

KINDNESS THE POWER OF KINDNESS ILLUSTRATED RELATION 

OF KINDNESS TO GOOD MANNERS KINDNESS AS A REVIVAL EL- 
EMENT CONSTITUTES A WANT OF THE CHURCH KINDNESS A 

TEST OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER PAGE 124 



Chapter XIY.— INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KIND- 
NESS CONSIDERED. 

LAW OF KINDNESS VIOLATED IN SPIRIT THE PULPIT SCOLD 

THE ACID REVIVALIST — RESULTS OF SUCH REVLV^ALS THE RE- 
LATION OF THE TONES OF THE VOICE TO KINDNESS — ANECDOTE 

OF WHITEFIELD VOICE OF THE PREACHER IN THE PULPIT 

ANECDOTE OF THE LITTLE GIRL IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT 

TOO LITTLE REALIZED WORDS UNFITLY SPOIvEN PERSONAL- 
ITIES IN DEBATE AN APOLOGY FOR THEIR PREVALENCE THE 

OLD WRITERS THE YOUNG WRITERS REFORM NEEDED... 133 



Chapter XY.— THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 

REVENGE ALWAYS A VICE — ANECDOTE OF COL. GARDINER — 
REVENGE PERPETUATES, BUT FORGIVENESS EXTERMINATES 

WRONG — REACTING POWER OF REVENGE SMALL RESENTMENTS 

SINFUL THE FACT ILLUSTRATED — LEGAL PUNISHMENT OP 

CRIMINALS NOT REVENGE SUGGESTIVE PRINCIPLES FORGIVE- 
NESS AND MERCY FORGIVENESS ESSENTIAL TO REVIVALS 

SOLEMNITY OF THE SUBJECT 144 



Chapter XYI.— PIETY THE HOPE OF THE CHURCH. 

A WORD TO THE PREACHER — THE LIFE OR DEATH OF A CHURCH 
TO BE TESTED BY HER PIETY — A PHOSPHORESCENT CHURCH LIFE 
ELEMENTS OF PIETY TREATED OF ABSURDITY OF DIS- 
BELIEF IN THE SPIRITUALITY OF PIETY SPIRITUALITY OF THE 

HEART ONLY CERTAINLY KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS — TEMPERS AS 
A TEST OF SPIRITUALITY — CONDUCT AND CREED AS PROOFS OF 
SPIRITUALITY IMPORTANCE OF HOLY TEMPERS 1 53 



CONTENTS. 9 



Chapter XVII.— INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF 
PIETY. 

WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE — DEFINITION OP TRUTH — WHEN KNOWL- 
EDGE BECOMES POWER DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE 

AND WISDOM THE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE THE CHRISTIAN 

SHOULD SEEK THE BIBLE-READING CHRISTIAN SECURITY 

AGAINST APOSTASY THE BIBLE AND POPULAR LITERATURE 

THE NEWSPAPER AN INTERPRETER OF THE BIBLE CHRISTIANS 

AND THE PROMISES PAGE 159 



Chapter XYIIL— MOTIVES AND INDIVIDUALITY AS 
ELEMENTS OF PIETY. 

MOTIVES — DIVIDED INTO INNOCENT AND RELIGIOUS AND BOTH 

DISINTERESTED BENEVOLENCE SINISTER MOTIVES — TWO THINGS 

TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE DOCTRINE OF MOTIVES THE M.VN 

WHO HANGS OUT HIS OWN SIGN INDIVIDUALITY A CHARAC- 
TER FOUND IN THE WAY — REWARD PROPORTIONED TO ABILITY 

ANECDOTE OF A GREAT GENERAL — THE LONDON MERCHANT 

IMPORTANT LAW OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH — REVIVAL HELP- 
HINTS 166 



Chapter XIX.— VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 

VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT 173 



Chapter XX.— THE PAST AND PRESENT— A CHARAC- 
TER. 

PHE PAST AND PRESENT — A CHARACTER 179 



Chapter XXL— PASTORAL VISITING, 

THE FOOLISH PHYSICIAN AND PREACHER CONTRASTED — HOW POWER 

MAY BE COLLECTED FOR THE PULPIT JOHN B. GOUGH — THE 

PEOPLE TO Bi: SEEN AT THEIR HOMES A GOOD PASTOR SKLDOM 

IMPUTED AN INFERIOR PREACHER THE PREACHER WHO CANNOT 

VISIT ANECDOTE OF THE CRIMEA THE MODEL TEACHER A 

MODEL PASTOR HEARTS ARE TO BE READ AS WELL AS BOOKS. 1 84- 



10 CONTENTS. 



Chapter XXII.—PASTOKAL VISITING. 

pastoral and social visiting — the pastor the common 
property of all — being instant in season — the sick 

boom emergences — death in a family funeral 

Sermons — due reference to be had to the customs op 
society page 192 



Chapter XXIII.— EXCITEMENT. 

METHODISTS NOT ALARMED — EXCITEMENT FEARED BECAUSfJ IT 

CONFLICTS WITH A CREED SELDOM SUCCESSFULLY GUARDED 

AGAINST DEFINITION OF METHODISM — EXTRAVAGANCES DEP- 
RECATED EXCITEMENT ANALYZED FOUR CARDINAL SOURCES 

OF EMOTION — RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT ALWAYS WHOLESOME. 200 



Chapter XXIV.— HAVE FAITH IN REVIVALS. 

REVIVALS SCRIPTURAL — THEIR SPIRIT FLOWS IN THE PRAYERS OF 
THE BIBLE, IN THE PROPHECIES OF THE BIBLE, IN THE PROMISES 

OF THE BIBLE, AND IN BIBLE HISTORY SECULAR HISTORY OP 

REVIVALS — REVIVALS AND METHODISM — A SOLECISM 208 



Chapter XXV.— HOLINESS. 

DISTINCTIONS AND DEFINITIONS — THE THING AND NOT THE 

MODE TO BE INVESTIGATED AGREEMENT AS IT RESPECTS THE 

THING IN ESSENCE DEFINITION GIVEN TRUE STANDARD 

AROUND WHICH WE CAN HARMONIZE QUESTIONS WHICH LIE 

BEYOND PROFITABLE INVESTIGATION THE THEORISTS SPE- 
CIAL MEETINGS TO SEEK FOR CHRISTIAN HOLINESS THE 

GRAND PECULIARITY — ADVANCING FROM THE " HOPE SO *' TO 
THE " KNOW SO " HOLINESS UNDER THE DIFFERENT DISPENSA- 
TIONS — HOLINESS THE BEBLE^S LAST DEMAND XJPON THE 
WORLD 214 



HELPS 



PEOMOTION OE EEVIYALS. 



CHAPTEE I. 

WHAT IS A EEVIYAL? 

THE CHURCH IN NEED OF REVIVALS — A REVIVAL NOT A MIRACLE 

REVIVALS THE RESULT OF THE USE OP APPROPRIATE MEANS 

THE PLACE WHERE REVIVALS MUST BEGIN — PRIVATE 

PRAYER AND PERSONAL EFFORT — THE WORKING OF THE 
SOCIAL PRINCIPLE. 

Like the land of Israel in the days of Elijah, 
the Churches are withering away for the want 
of a revival shower. The exceptions are rare. 
All acknowledge these facts with regret, and 
look out and abroad for relief, whether they 
commence to work at home to secure it or not. 
This delineation is true at this writing. We 
hope it may not be, dear reader, when it falls 
into your hands. 

What is a revival, and how can we, how 



12 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REYIYALS. 

must we, labor to promote it? A revival is not 
a miracle. Things marvelous in our eyes may 
often occur in a revival, but miracles are not 
now wrought in them. A miracle is the setting 
aside or suspension of some law of nature, to 
show that God is above nature, to prove his pres- 
ence, and for the establishment of some revela- 
tion which he is about to make. But God has 
made all the revelation to man that he will ever 
make, and the mission of miracles has ceased. 
God has revealed himself, and accompanied the 
revelation by miraculous demonstration. He 
would now show that he is the author of nature 
and her laws, by always acting in accordance 
with the requirements of the latter, and thus 
evincing his approval of them. We are not to 
look, then, for miracles in revivals. They are 
the result of natural causes, the fruit of the use 
of appropriate means, and the certainty or prob- 
ability of their occmTcnce must be judged of 
by considering the means used, the wisdom em- 
ployed in the use of these means, and the oppo- 
sition to be overcome. 

A revival consists of a greatly increased in- 
terest on the subject of religion on the part of 
believers ; in which they are blessedly conscious 
of an increase of love to God, faith in his truth. 



WHAT IS A REVIVAL? 13 

a growth in all the graces of the Spirit, and a 
deep solicitude for the salvation of sinners. In 
this spiritual condition, believers are ready in 
word, and in spirit, and by action, to exert them- 
selves to bring souls to the cross. The Church, 
made up of such believers, becomes a quickened 
mass of spiritual life, and the very atmosphere 
becomes electrical with spiritual influences. 
The social principle is brought into action, and 
man becomes a missionary to his fellow, neigh- 
bor, child, or kinsman, under circumstances of 
very great advantage, the Holy Ghost being 
present, to impart power from on high, just in 
proportion to our faith and effort. Led by the 
faithful pastor, as an army by its general, this 
squadron of live Christians are going forth into 
the highways and hedges, and " compelling them 
to come in." O, what a lovely sight is this, one 
over which the angels in heaven swell higher the 
notes of gladness, and bend from their celestial 
stations to gratulate men on earth. How often 
has our poor heart dilated over scenes like these, 
and how sweet still their memory ! When will 
these days of refreshing again revisit the whole 
Church — days when saints were thrilled with un- 
earthly joy and transport, and sinners, willing 
and weeping, came trembling to the altar, with 



14 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

the inquiry on their lips, uttered in fragments, 
by reason of their deep, heart-swelling sobs, 
"What must I do to be saved?" " O Lord, re- 
vive thy work." The right place for a revival 
to commence, then, is in the Church — ^in the 
hearts of believers. 

But what means are to be employed ? And 
here we would insist upon the importance of 
considering revivals as the result of the use of 
the appropriate means, so far as man is concern- 
ed. If we consider them as miracles — as occur- 
ring arbitrarily — as being confined to particular 
seasons of the year, we are in great danger of 
losing sight of our responsibility in the case ; of 
waiting for a revival instead of working for it. 
The Holy Ghost is always equally ready, but 
man, though always equally needy, is not always 
equally ready. Would we have a revival ? then, 
the first thing to be done is not to look to others 
— ^not to wait the coming of some famous re- 
vivalist — not to look out of ourselves, but into 
our own hearts, and then up to heaven. What 
is our own condition as it respects our personal 
piety and holiness? What is the condition of 
our spiritual emotions ? Are we merely formal 
in duty and moral in practice, and have we come 
to conclude that pure and undefiled religion be- 



WHAT IS A REVIVAL? 15 

fore God consists in this ? What are our spirit- 
ual tastes ? Do we linger as upon the banks of 
the pure river of the waters of life, clear as 
crystal, over the inspired page, and hear the 
whispers of the Spirit, and feel his refreshing 
presence like the fragrance of the flower, in the 
word of the Lord, which endure th forever ! Do 
we, betimes, love retirement, and seek the closet 
for uninterrupted communion with our heavenly 
Father, that he may reward us openly ? With- 
out private prayer, personal religion loses its 
vitality, and ceases to be a constant and abiding 
joy to its possessor — a well of water within the 
heart, springing up into everlasting life. O, 
this is the place to begin ! What would be the 
result of the re- erection of the four hundred 
thousand fallen closet-altars in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church ? We verily believe that no 
religious duty equaling it in importance is so 
frequently and generally neglected as that of 
secret prayer. Hence, the spiritual life of many 
is like a wet- weather spring, when it ought to 
be perennial, a living spring. 

There is an individualism in the spiritual 
life that must be commenced and be con- 
tinued by an habitually secret intercourse 
with God. This fact is exemplified in the 



16 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

lives of all good men, both inspired and 
uninspired. In holy intercourse with God, 
in heavenly vision, patriarchs, prophets, and 
apostles have always commenced their event- 
ful careers. '^From the closet to the Church, 
from our knees to the pulpit," were the mot- 
toes of the reformers ; and every revival min- 
ister since their days knows that here is the 
hiding of his power, the beginning of his 
strength. 

The Church, then, would she have a revi- 
val, must potentialize herself by an individual 
resort to the holiest altar of the cathedral, the 
one that shuts out alike the gaze of man, the in- 
terruption of the world, and leaves the worshiper 
alone with his God, like Jacob at Bethel, at the 
hour of midnight. ''Give me Scotland, or I 
die !" " Give me souls, or take my soul !" were 
the overheard closet supplications of John Knox 
and the rapt "Whitefield. O, for this fervor of the 
hidden life, that takes the kingdom of heaven by 
force ; the absence of this is the generic cause 
of the absence of revivals, and the prevalence 
of dearth and spiritual languor. It was while 
Cornelius fasted and prayed, that a man — an 
angel, Jesus Christ — "stood before him in bright 
clothing," and instructed him in the way of life 



WHAT IS A REVIVAL? 17 

everlasting. The example of Cornelius, the first 
Gentile convert, is still a model for the whole 
Church. Among professors, the sins of omission 
are greater than those of commission, and of the 
first named the greatest of all is that of restrain- 
ing prayer before God. 

Beginning with the right duty in the right 
place, family, social, and public prayer, attended 
with a greatly quickened faith, and an increased 
love for all the services and ordinances of the 
sanctuary, will be the result naturally, as flows 
the stream when the fountain is opened. A re- 
vival is the result of a union of effort on the 
part of spiritually intensified individuals. "For 
where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there am I in the midst of them." It 
must commence with the individual, and work 
socially ; commence within, and work outwardly ; 
commence in the Church, and especially with 
the ministry of the Church. "And there shall 
be like people, like priest." It must be com- 
menced with the grace we have, and not wait 
for grace to commence it. " Unto him that hath 
shall be given." The Holy Ghost is always 
willing and waiting to shed on the Church the 
spirit of revival ! " If ye then, being evil, know 
how to give good things to your children, how 



18 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIYALS. 

mucli more shall your Father in heaven give 
the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ?" If a 
Church be destitute of a revival, whose fault is 
it? Let every Christian and every Christian 
pastor start the searching inquiry, "Is it I!" 
^^Lord,isitI?" 



HINDERANOES TO EBVIVALS. 10 



CHAPTER 11. 

HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 

WANT OP FAITH — A REVIVAL FAITH DEFINED — THE GOSPEL'S 
CROWNING GIFT — THE MORAL MIGHT OF THE OLD REFORMERS 
— THE OFFICIAL CHRISTIAN — THE DIPLOMATIC CHRISTIAN — 
THE PARTISAN CHRISTIAN. 

First we will mention the absence of a pure, 
simple, and vigorous faith, on the part of 
Christians. By a pure faith, we mean that 
which troubles not itself with rationalizing or 
philosophizing; that which rises above syllo- 
gisms ; that which stops not to reason on questions 
eternally settled, but takes God at his word; 
that which believes his promises, interpreted 
upon the most literal principle, so that they 
accord with the analogy of Scripture, and the 
evidence of the senses. It is not the faith of 
transcendentalism, which affects to understand 
itself, and deceives itself, by conceit, into a be- 
lief that it does ; nor of German rationalism, 
which affects to believe nothing that it cannot 
demonstrate; nor the faith of the Eomanist, 
which pollutes itself by believing what is not 



20 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

required, and omitting what is; nor is it the 
faith of ignorance, which substitutes for a con- 
fiding conception of the great truths of Chris- 
tianity, a mere spasmodic and evanescent fervor. 
By a simple faith, we mean that which refuses 
to parley with obstacles, like Abraham when re- 
quired to offer up Isaac ; a faith that does not 
disdain means because they are seemingly sim- 
ple, but which goes and washes in the Kiver 
Jordan, like the leper in the days of the proph- 
et, no matter how loathsome the disease; a 
faith, whose motto is. With God all things are 
possible to them that believe. By a vigorous 
faith, we mean that which embraces the heart 
as well as the mind ; the affections, as well as 
the enlightened judgment. Perfect faith is per- 
fect love and perfect confidence acting in sub- 
missive harmony. This is faith of that vigorous 
type that secures a personal salvation with the 
evidence of it in the witness of the Spirit, and 
which makes affliction delight, infirmity and 
tribulation glory, and duty a relief. But O, 
how rare this faith! how prevalent unbelief! 
And, in view of the absence of revivals, one 
almost fancies he literally hears again the lan- 
guage, " Christ could do no mighty work there, 
because of their unbelief." 



HINDERANCE8 TO REVIVALS. 21 

Brethren of the pulpit and the pews, let the 
prayer ascend : Lord, we believe, but help thou 
our unbelief! Yes, here is just the point, the 
gist, the canker at the heart and the lungs of a 
consumptive Church. We believe, but we have 
not faith ; or, if it be liked better, we have faith, 
but not enough of it. We believe in the Bible 
historically, conform to its worship formally, and 
practice its morality prudentially. But the 
legalist and the moralist, the followers of Moses 
and Epictetus, are but the meager skeleton 
samples of Christians ; they are but the bones 
in the vision, which have just stood up, it is true, 
but the flesh and sinews have not come upon 
them; they are not the temples of the Holy 
Ghost. The crowning gift of the Gospel is the 
gift of the Holy Ghost; and he that hath not 
this gift is destitute of power from on high — a 
dead-head — a negative pole in the communion 
of saints. Like the foolish virgins in the parable, 
his lamp, though it may once have been lit, has 
gone out ; or, like the branch which abideth not 
in the vine, it is withering away, though it may 
yet hang pendent from its parent stem. When 
will Christians learn that the life and vitality, 
of religion consist in an experimental con- 
sciousness of a spiritual union with God, through 



22 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEYIVALS. 

GUI' Lord Jesus Christ ? The restoration of this 
life-imparting and life-intensifying union, is the 
fii*st form and foundation of everything that is 
worth calling a revival. In reading the lives of 
the saints, whether sacred or profane — those 
saints, we mean, who were moral giants, and 
shook the earth with their tread and the heavens 
with their praj^ers, though constantly exclaiming, 
"of ourselves we can do nothing" — we find them 
preeminently distinguished for this simple, pure, 
and vigorous faith. They consecrated them- 
selves to God in its hallowed flame, with rap- 
turous resolves and alacrity, though the flames 
of martyrdom curled over the pathway of duty, 
or the clanking chains of dungeons commingled 
with the prayei's of their persecutors ; for no such 
persecutors as confronted many of them are per- 
mitted to confront Christians now. What, with 
such obstacles removed out of the way, would 
such types of tlie Christian character do for the 
world now, where but a tithe of those professing 
evangelical Christianity, thus to live up to their 
privileges, and take to themselves this great 
power of compelling the sinner to come in ! 
The great defect of the Christian character, at 
this age, we apprehend, is, that of being legal^ 
oflicial, diplomatic, and partisan. To obey the 



HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 23 

Discipline of the Church, and the moral law 
of God, with some faint resolves of intending 
to be more spiritual, seems to quite satisfy the 
consciences of some. Cursed be such opiates! 
Away with such chloroform of modern invention, 
the very mesmeric manipulations of the devil. 

By an official piety, we mean that which 
gets along easy, whether as class-leader, local 
preacher, or pastor ; many of the latter often 
seeming to think, or, rather, so acting, that the 
thoughts of men will not rise any higher in 
reference to them, than that preaching is one of 
the common callings of life, and an honorable 
means of at least a frugal livelihood. Class- 
leaders of such spirit parrot over the same stere- 
otyped stories and phrases, until insipidity and 
monotony become the terror of the class-room, 
and flow out by imitation into the thinly at- 
tended, and late and irregular arriving, weekly 
prayer-meeting. Such pastors, too, are often 
found feeding, discouraging, and disgusting their 
flocks with stale and wormy manna ; using that 
which has been kept over too long, rather than 
gather it freshly descended from heaven. 

By the diplomatic Christian, or Christian 
minister, we mean the man whose whole soul 
seems to be absorbed, like Martha at Bethany, 



24 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

with too much serving. There are wrongs in 
the Discipline, order, and policy of the Church, 
not here and there an obvious, colossal wrong, 
but wrongs, in his view, almost innumerable ; 
and with such, every inconsiderable defect looms 
up into a hydra, which must be immediately 
righted, cured, or the Church, like the Turkish 
empire, is on her last legs, and only asks decent 
burial. Or, another type of this diplomatic 
Christian character consists in immensely busy- 
ing itself about the mere external manifestations 
of the enterprise, and the benevolence of the 
Church. They have no time for anything but 
to build academies, seminaries, and colleges; 
multiply, in some form, organizations of aggress 
iveness — ^fiscal plans of relief and Church ag 
gression ; no time, we say, for this spiritual 
intensification of the man personal in the 
Church of God; no time to arm themselves 
with those elements of moral power which alone 
can result in the sinner's conversion. Now, we 
like this man of so great a zeal for the mere 
material and external in our Zion, but we know 
well that the health of the whole Church re- 
quires that his zeal have a higher origin ; that 
these things he ought to do, and not to leave 
the other undone. The great error of the 



HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 25 

Church, in every age, has been that of having 
her attention diverted from the spiritual and the 
invisible, to the external and the visible. Like 
the tree that has suddenly lost its powers to 
drink in life from the earth through its root- 
lungs, and dies, though covered with fruit and 
foliage, assuming in its death all the fascinating 
and dolphin hues of our Western forests in 
autumn, is such a Church. We hope our read- 
ers will profit by the suggestive simile. All our 
works must be wrought in God, or they are but 
the hay, the wood, and the stubble ; at best, the 
precious stones. Methodism builds a church 
daily, but what avails this, if she has acres of 
church room to spare all over the land, and sin- 
ners rush to hell like flocks of shepherdless 
sheep rushing into the jaws of the foe, because 
she has not in these churches altars blazing with 
heaven-descended fire, to arrest their attention 
or summon their presence ? Catholic countries 
are full of churches : Paris has church room for 
nearly every thousand of her population, and 
yet she has lost her power, and deservedly so, 
to attract the mass to her altars. O God, 
make our Zion to the people of this country, 
what the pool of Bethesda was to the afflicted 
and the maimed of Jerusalem. They resorted 



26 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EETIYALS. 

thither, because a messenger from lieaven de- 
scended and troubled the waters. 

By the partisan Christian, we mean the man 
of great denominational confidence, of profound 
respect for old-fashioned Methodism; one that 
is perpetually dilating on what Methodism has 
done ; and his denominational egotism is perpet- 
ually oozing out, not only at a proper time and a 
proper place, and with good taste, but at all times, 
and on all occasions. Like the Jews in the days 
of the Saviour, such persons' liveliest emotions 
seem to be kindled up in an overweening venera- 
tion for the fathers, with an exaggerated estimate 
of whatever has passed in the history of our 
Church, accompanied with a disposition to de- 
preciate, or look with suspicion or distrust on 
whatever is present. We sometimes fear that, 
for the interests of revivals, this character is 
quite sufliciently numerous. The Jews, in the 
zenith of their apostasy, beautified the tombs of 
tlie prophets, and yet beheaded John the Bap- 
tist, and crucified Christ. But we have only 
space to hold the mirror for a moment before 
this character, and to ask him to join with us in 
the common-place and yet appropriate prayer : 
Lord, give us all more religion ! " O Lord, in 
the midst of these years, revive thy work!" 



HINDEEANCES TO REVIVALS. 27 



CHAPTER III. 

HUSTDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 

THE CHURCH NOT GENERALLY HATED — A TACIT WANT OF FAITH 

IN HER CLAIMS A CAUSE OF MORAL OBDURACY SOCIAL CASTES 

THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS WANTING IN PERVASIVENESS 

THE MATERIALISM OF THE POPULAR MIND. 

This chapter shall be confined to the considera- 
tion of obstructions that lie between the Church 
and the sinner — between the Church and the 
popular mind. And here we will announce a 
conviction, which, though most reluctant to en- 
tertain, yet are we compelled to entertain it. 
We live in a day when the obstacles to the 
spread of a spiritual and experimental Christian- 
ity are greater than they have been before in 
half an age. We speak more particularly of 
this country, though we fear that the same is 
true of Christendom generally. Among these 
obstacles is not to be ranked a growing con- 
tempt for the Church, its services and its ordi- 
nances. The Church is not despised by the 
world, for it is not felt by it to be particularly 
in tlie way. Men of intelligence have come to 



28 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

realize the great fact of all history — that relig- 
ion and worship of some sort are but the crop- 
ping out of man's strongest instincts ; and see- 
ing that human nature was not made to do 
without some such things, they are not destruc- 
tionists in their feelings with respect to the 
Church, but look upon it, upon tlie whole, as 
one of the highest and purest forms of what they 
realize to be necessary to human nature. They 
prefer all the stir that is made about religion, to 
no religion. Hence, for this reason, as well as 
for others that might be named, we often see 
noble examples in pecuniary contributions, and 
other courtly acts, involving the interests of the 
Church and its ministry, on the part of men 
whose hearts seem dead to every awakening, 
spiritual, and evangelical visitation; and for such 
acts of benevolence and amenity, for ourselves, 
we feel thankful. The Church, too, is high in 
popular favor, from the fact that it always takes 
hold, in some form, of some of those cords that 
chain the hearts of men. In some localities it 
is a place of fashionable resort, the weekly ren- 
dezvous of a large representation of the social 
circles; (though everybody affects to despise aris- 
tocracy and fashion, yet are they really always 
and ever the idol of the popular heart ;) resorts 



HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 29 

where the socially esthetic, chastened and re- 
fined by the sacred, finds a ready and free in- 
dulgence. Most men, also, still respect the 
Church, because some members of their family 
or ancestry, a pious parent or grandmother, 
there sought refuge and rest at the foot of her 
altars. No, no, the American people do not 
despise the Church, nor plan in the dark, fili- 
bustering expeditions against her. Their reason- 
ings, instincts, memories, all yet bind them to 
the Church. Why, then, has not the Church 
more power over them ? Why the genuine phe- 
nomena of conversion, old-fashioned conversion 
if you please, so rare ? 

Nor must we, in considering obstacles in the 
way of revivals, urge their necessity from any 
remarkable decline in membership on the part 
of any of the evangelical branches of the Church 
family. In particular localities such diminu- 
tions are not uncommon ; but, as a whole, statis- 
tics show that every branch of the Church has 
continued, and does still continue to progress 
numerically, in wealth, and social consequence. 
But still, every thinker upon this subject seems 
fully aware, that, if there be not in the Church 
(and we thank God that there is not) the total 
absence of the spiritual element that descended 



30 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS, 

at Pentecost, there is an immense and lam- 
entable absence of pervasiveness on the part 
of this element. The leaven is, indeed, hid in 
the meal, but the process of leavening seems 
feeble and slow. Like the barometer, that fore- 
tells the storm, while the golden, hazy light of 
the softest calm sheds beauty over the land- 
scape, and the balmy zephyrs do not turn aside 
the butterfly in his flight, so every deeply-spirit- 
ual mind yet feels the pressure of the world's 
great necessity, and sighs with a sickening and 
sinking heart over the desolations of Zion. Ifot, 
indeed, over her material any more than over 
her numerical desolations. Such heart feels 
that the Church is prosperous in all her exter- 
nal manifestations, scarcely less than society 
or the commonwealth, in this age of unparalleled 
material prosperity. But what pious heart knows 
not that the strength of a Church consists not in 
numbers, any more than do railroads make the 
way to heaven shorter and easier. The strength 
of the Church consists not in the magniflcence 
of her altai^s, any more than did its purity con- 
sist in the gorgeousness of her temple (a splen- 
dor that dimmed the luster of the sun, and smote 
the beholder with blindness) at the time of the 
crucifixion. Externals are not to be depreciated, 



HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 31 

but the spiritual and the invisible, of v^hich they 
are but the husks, are to be exalted. Not in 
this mountain, nor in that, but in spirit and in 
truth, God is to be worshiped. Why, then, we 
again ask, this generally pervading want of 
power on the part of the Church, the want of 
spiritual aggressiveness, the want to humble, to 
save, and to develop the spiritual life of the sin- 
ner? On the part of many members of the 
Church it would be the veriest croakery, if not 
slander, to say, that they are not as holy as they 
ever were ; ay, more, their intelligence is greatly 
increased, their habitudes of piety matured by 
experience, their spirituality is of a more mascu- 
line and, therefore, effective type. Nor will it 
do to depreciate either the piety or talent of 
the pulpit ; for if it be no better in these re- 
spects, it is scarcely reasonable or philosophical 
to supi^ose it to be any worse. In an age of 
such mighty progress, to make it an exception 
to all progress, would be to assume a position 
immensely difficult to prove. Relatively, we 
doubt not, the pulpit is weaker ; weaker, be- 
cause the obstacles to be overcome are stronger ; 
but here we anticipate the question, which we 
will again ask, and then answer : Why are not 
conversions more frequent? Why are not mani- 



32 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

festations of spiritual life, of holy living, more 
common ? 

Is not this the answer : That while, on the 
part of men, respect for the Church has not 
been diminished, and even confidence in the 
great principles of Gospel morality, in the cer- 
tainty with which these principles follow their 
tendencies, has actually been on the increase 
in the popular mind, there has actually been 
going on, at the same time, a sad reaction in 
another direction ? Has not the public mind, in 
respect to Christianity, been like two counter 
currents ; like a suddenly -swollen river, which 
runs down stream on one side, and up stream 
on the opposite bank ? What we mean is this : 
there is a sadly-increasing want of confidence 
in the popular mind in such truths as regenera- 
tion and sanctification by the Holy Spirit ; par- 
don and purity, by faith in an atoning Saviour, 
accompanied by the witness of the Spirit, which 
Spirit is to continue to take of the things which 
are Christ's, and reveal them to the apprehen- 
sion of the renewed mind, and constitute the at- 
mosphere of the soul in that hidden life, that 
kingdom of Christ which is not of this world. 
Is there not an increasing skepticism to the ex- 
perimental verities of the Gospel ? Does not the 



>:[mDERANCE8 TO REVIVALS. 33 

popular mind, everywhere, tacitly look upon the 
spiritual essentials of a heaven-descended evan- 
gelism, as dogmas about which it is not called 
to concern itself? This, we think, is that form 
of infidelity, the united product of many other 
forms, and the careful nursing of many other 
modern things, that constitutes the very Alp and 
Apennine ramparts that now lie before the 
Church, in her attempts to promote revivals. 
The fruitful causes of this colossal obstacle, and 
the course to be pursued in order to overcome 
^t. may constitute the theme of future chapters. 
In the meantime, we close this by an exhorta- 
tion to our brethren, to "strengthen the things 
which remain, that are ready to die." 

3 



34 HELPS TO THE PBOMOTION OF KEVIVALS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 

THE PROTEAN CHARACTER OF UNBELIEF — THE VERY ELECT MAY 

BE DECETTED INFIDELITY ASSUMING TO BE AN ANGEL OF 

LIGHT IT FINDS APOLOGY FROM THE CONDUCT OF CHRISTIANS 

— AN EXAMPLE GIVEN — THE PREVALENCE OF PERVERTED SCI- 
ENCE AND PHILOSOPHY FALSELY SO CALLED MARVELOUS 

MATERIAL PROGRESS MAN^S ABUSE OF BLESSINGS AND MISIN- 
TERPRETATION OF THE PURPOSES OF THEIR BESTOWMENT 

THE PULPIT SHOULD ADAPT ITSELF TO THE POPULAR MIND 

THE LOGICAL ELEMENT MORE PREDOMINANT THAN THE EMO- 
TIONAL — OUR SUFFICIENCY OF GOD. 

In the last chapter we mentioned, as the great 
obstacle in the way of the Church's access to 
the outsiders and sinners, the existence of popu- 
lar infidelity in regard to the experimental veri- 
ties, the spiritual truths of the Gospel. This type 
of infidelity is not outspoken, it hides itself in 
silence ; we would that it existed in another than 
tacit form. Like Satan, from the time that he 
entered the serpent until he went into the swine 
of the Gadarenes, so does infidelity assume all 
shapes. It has as many incarnations as the 
Brahmin god Yishnu; like Satan, too, one of 
its oldest tricks is to conceal its presence. It 



HINDERANCE8 TO REVIVALS. 35 

may be that the devil's power is greatly in- 
creased because he keeps himself invisible. 
The form of infidelity we are considering, also, 
is so subtle, that it may even deceive, and often 
does, its own possessor ; he may not always be 
conscious of the vital extent to which he is a 
hell-exposed unbeliever ; like as the odors of the 
fabled upas, may the dreadful conclusion wliich 
he has settled in his own mind, rest in his own 
consciousness, and yet, like it, its sub||| virus is 
fatal. " Yerily, verily, I say unto you. Ye must 
be born of the Spirit." 

Every form of infidelity has its own particu- 
lar epoch, in which it flourishes best; certain 
social phases of the age are more or less con- 
genial to its growth, and determine the particu- 
lar type which it may assume. Infidelity, in 
these days, does not denounce the Bible by 
wholesale. Contrariwise, it professes for it a 
great reverence, as Judas said, " Hail, Master ! 
and kissed him." Every form of infidelity now 
quotes Scripture in its support. 

We come, then, to name summarily a few 
of the principal elements that are now in active 
occupancy of the popular mind, and admirably 
calculated, if not of necessity, by ready abuse, 
to foster the form of infidelity we are deploring. 



36 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF RETIVALS. 

We first name the sectarian polemical element. 
What we mean is this : the evangelical Church 
exists fragmentarily, and these fragments are 
called sects or denominations ; naturally enough, 
then, do sectarian rivalries, contests about doc- 
trines and dogmas, arise. And now, let us ask, 
and it will be quite sufficient to ask. What is 
the spirit, as a general thing, with which these 
contests are carried on? So far from it being 
an occa^nal exception, it rather amounts to 
the rule, that the religious controversies of the 
pulpit, but more especially of the press, are 
carried on with almost as much of the spirit of 
bitterness and sarcasm, though, we admit, with 
much improvement of diction, as are the battles 
of party strife in the political w^orld. How 
many painful examples might here be adduced ; 
how much is here suggested, that we have 
neither space nor desire to say ; how sickens 
the heart imbued with that spirit of gentleness, 
meekness, love, and long-suffering, at what we 
have said. If the spiritual man possessed by 
the Christian, manifest all those moral phenom- 
ena in temper, words, etc., that are manifested 
by men w^ho make no pretensions to regenera- 
tion, the former, at the same time, contending 
with " apostolic blows and knocks," that the 



HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 3T 

spiritual life is the very antithesis of such phe- 
nomena, what other result have we any reason, 
logically, to expect, than that of breeding a 
popular infidelity to the spiritual verities of the 
Gospel ? As a painful example of denomination- 
al selfishness and bigotry, we record here a late 
current fact. Who has not read of the immor- 
tal Mills and Hall of Williams College, in Mas- 
sachusetts, consecrating themselves to the work 
of foreign missions, then little thought of, by 
daily meeting for prayer by the side of a certain 
haystack ? This fact has become of sublime his- 
toric importance. At a late commencement of 
Williams College it was appropriately resolved 
to celebrate this event by a grand catholic mis- 
sionary jubilee. 

The representatives of sister Churches, besides 
the Presbyterian, were Dr. Tyng, Episcopalian, 
of New- York ; Dr. Wyckoff, Dutch Reformed, 
of the same city, and Eev. Mr. Briggs, LL.D., a 
Baptist. These respective denominations, to- 
gether with representatives of the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, all 
faithfully represented to the numerous audience 
in attendance the success of the missionary work 
among the heathen. But — would the reader be- 
lieve it? — no allusion whatever was made, during 



38 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF BEYTVALS. 

the interesting proceedings, to one of the largest 
missionary denominations of all Christendom. 
Methodism, taken in its several sections, is the 
banner missionary Church of the world. Of the 
thirty or more evangelical foreign missions, 
six were established by and belong to leading 
branches of the great Methodist family. About 
one third of all the missionaries in the foreign 
fields are Methodists. One half of all the Church 
members gathered from heathendom are under 
the care of Methodists ; and this noble work is 
carried on by Methodism at an expense of about 
one fifth of all the missionary means raised by 
the entire evangelical Church. And yet, these 
learned professors and doctors, the acknowledged 
embodiment of American evangelism, could not 
render honor to whom honor was due. Can 
reading and thinking outsiders fail to observe 
such conduct? And what effect will such dis- 
coveries have upon their faith? The natural 
inference is, that human regenerated nature is 
about the same, after all, with human nature 
unsubmitted to the process. Fatal conclusion! 
and who is responsible for it ? 

There was a time when such things were less 
deleterious than now, though, probably, there 
never was a time when their prevalence was 



HINDERAKCES TO REVIVALS. 39 

more general. That time was, when the popular 
mind was less logical, and more under the con- 
trol of the emotional. Ours is an age of popular 
thinking, because it is an age of such popular 
reading as never existed before. All men, now, 
ask a reason for things, and answer they will 
their own questions, if not answered for them. 
How sad to reflect, that this mighty increase of 
popular intelligence should thus, by the action 
of Christians, be turned against us ! 

We may next mention the prevalence of 
popular delusions — sciences, falsely so called ; 
phrenology, mesmerism, spiritualism, etc., etc. 
In many of these delusions there is much truth, 
though perverted ; and the more, the more dan- 
gerous; not that all ages have not had their 
delusions, and many, in the Christian Church, a 
hundredfold more numerous than the present, 
but no such means existed in those days for the 
general diffusion of such delusions. They were 
local, and therefore ephemeral. They did not 
take those organized forms, with their organs, 
oracles, and their chief of magicians, as with us. 
Simon Magus could not issue a newspaper, as 
he can do now ; at the same time that the Church 
can work no miracle to withstand his dirty 
divinations, There is, too, in societv, the work- 



40 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEYIVALS. 

ing of an element most mischievonsly materializ- 
ing in its tendencies. Like the postdiluvians on 
the beautiful and sunny plains of Shinar, man- 
kind are ever prone to abuse God's greatest gift^ 
to purposes of blasphemy and sacrilege. The 
very marvel of the daguerreotype, the steam- 
ship, the telegraph, the railroad, and the loco- 
motive, from the transports of wonder at which 
mankind have not yet cooled down, has, doubt- 
less, weakened the popular faith in the old- 
fashioned order of human restoration and ame- 
lioration. Indeed, it would be a serious oversight 
in our study of the means by which societj^ is 
affected, not to look upon the discoveries of the 
present half century as affecting it most pro- 
foundly. Mankind is not only given to the 
abuse of blessings, but is perpetually misin- 
terpreting the purpose of their bestowment. 
Like the children of Israel, when they were 
without meat, thev murmured from fear of 
starvation. "When the Lord converted the region 
around the camp nightly into a pigeon roost, they 
waxed fat and sensual, '' ate and drank, and then 
rose up to play;" many nowadays, expatiating 
on the world's progress, seem to have had their 
heads turned, and we should scarcely be as- 
tonished to hear nf their soon preaching that 



HINDERAKCES TO BEYIVALS. 41 

men are to be regenerated by electricity, and 
go to heaven by steam. Nor are these effects 
upon the world's mind so surprising, considering 
the marvelousness of the cause. It was but in 
1807, that Fulton launched the first steamboat. 
In 1825 the first railroad was put into operation. 
The electric telegraph was not demonstrated as 
feasible until 1845. Hoe's printing press is but 
an invention of j^esterday. Gas light was un- 
known to the world in 1800. The beautiful 
discoveries of Daguerr6 were unknown until 
1839 ; and while discoveries have thus been going 
on upon this earth, astronomy has been enlarging 
her borders in the heavens, and planet after 
planet has been discovered. The mind of the 
world has been shocked at its own inventions, 
and is intoxicated with extravagant expectations 
of what may be discovered in the next half 
century. Nothing short of a millennium with- 
out submitting to the old and trite requisition 
of entering in at the '^ strait gate," is expected. 
Fatal and fanatical conclusion ! Depraved man 
will attempt to walk by sparks of his own kind- 
ling, and hew out to himself cisterns that will 
hold no water. 

By many these are considered, without a 
question, as the effective agents of a social mil- 



42 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REYIYALS. 

lennium near at hand. Sad and fatal mistake ! 
Just as apt are they to be the agents of human 
degeneracy and sensualism, if the old " balm of 
Gilead " (the vital principle of spiritual life, that 
connects the soul with its Maker) be overlooked 
in the construction of society. But still the 
popular belief obtains, that men are actually to 
be made better by steam and electricity, rather 
than by the Spirit of God. Deluded with the 
belief that society is being constantly lifted to 
some better state, as with the lever of Archime- 
des, favored with the fulcrum of modern discov- 
ery, the sinner fancies himself going up with the 
world, and feels willing to risk his chance. 

Tlie popular mind, too, must be considered as 
just passing a transition state; formerly, the 
emotional almost uniformly controlled the intel- 
lectual ; now the intellectual controls the emo- 
tional. Not that the laws of sympathy have 
changed, but the intellect, dependent upon differ- 
ent laws and circumstances for its growth, has 
been placed under those circumstances that have 
developed its power. Not that true earnestness 
is any less appreciated, or less essential. Not that 
in the storming of the city of Mansoul, (to use a 
thought of that incomparable dreamer of Bed- 
ford jail,) Mr. Wet-eyes is any less needed; but 



HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 43 

certain it is, that we have arrived at a period in 
which, if we are not called to give the sinner a 
rationale of his conversion, we are called, in a 
manner commensurate with his own intelligence, 
and the logical processes of his own mind, to 
give him a reason, par excellence, why he should 
be converted, and the Spirit or grace of God be 
the essential agent in the work. The ordinary- 
fervid and dogmatic ministrations of our fore- 
fathers, just here, should not be looked to wholly 
as a model. We know not but that we may be 
called to fight the battle of the Christian evi- 
dences over again, with reference to this phase 
of unbelief. Certain it is, that men are now 
moved more by moving their thoughts than 
moving their emotions ; and the former seems 
the Malakoff Tower, on which, first, to make the 
attack ; while, at the same time, Methodist 
preachers should have all of the latter that they 
ever had; and God forbid they should have less. 
And, above all, may God save us from that en- 
thusiasm that disdains the appropriate means, 
on the one hand, and from that self-sufficiency 
which forgets that it is " Not by might, nor by 
power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord," on the 
other. 



44 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 



CHAPTER V. 

HINDERAISrCES TO REVIVALS— PLAN OF RESIST- 
ANCE PROPOSED. 

GERMAN RATIONALISM — THE EMIGRATION OF ERROR — SPIRITUAL- 
ISM AND ITS COGNATES DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ETHICAL 

AND THE DOCTRINAL — A DEFECT IN THE PULPIT AN ILLUS- 
TRATION ILLUSTRATED CONCLUSION OF A LEGITIMATE RATION- 
ALISM THE PREACHER SHOULD STUDY NATURE A PULPIT 

REFORM SUGGESTED. 

In the last chapter we named, as the most for- 
midable obstacle in the way of revivals, a grow- 
ing infidelity to the experimental verities of 
Gospel truth. The tendencies of the age were 
to materialism and rationalism. These errors, 
which have nearly ingulfed the evangelism of 
the Lutheran Reformation on the European con- 
tinent, were insidious, diffusive, and contagious. 
Like the cholera, they were now on their Western 
emigration. To do right was to be right, in the 
tacit estimation of men generally. The great 
truths, " Ye must be born again ;" " By grace ye 
are saved through faith ;" " He that is born of 
God hath the witness in himself," were popu- 
larly ignored. And as the spiritual life ap- 



PLAN OF RESISTANCE PROPOSED. 45 

preached the mysterious, outsiders were willing 
to give to "mystics," to " fanaticism," to "gray- 
headed orthodoxy, and superannuated old age," 
the full monopoly of these things. The mysti- 
cism of many of the unclean spirits abroad in the 
land, such as clairvoyance, spirit-rapping, etc., 
and the strange experiences of Judge Edmonds, 
the marvelous and magniloquent revelations of 
A. J. Davis, and the mystic dreams of Emanuel 
Swedenborg, are secretly claimed to be all of a 
piece with the spiritual transports of the young 
convert, and the mvsterious transitions of mind 
that he underwent, as he passed from conver- 
sion to sanctification, as described by such 
writers as Professors Upham and Mahan, Ma- 
dame Guyon, Mrs. Rogers, and Mrs. Phoebe 
Palmer. The popular mind, we say, under the 
far-reaching influence of this rationalistic poison, 
was coming to regard the spiritual verities of 
Christianity as all of a piece with those ludicrous 
marvels, which, like Jonah's gourd, come up in 
the dark and perish in the light. How best to 
resist this tendency in the minds of men, 
becomes the question which our last chapter 
suggested, because it is manifest, that if the 
creed of men, whether in the Church or out of 
it, consists in substituting mere Gospel morality 



46 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

for Gospel spirituality^ the Church and the 
world will soon become bankrupt of both. As 
one step toward curing this evil, we intimated 
that the pulpit might find it necessary to dwell 
more frequently and directly upon those experi- 
mental verities, upon those truths of the Gospel 
which spring not from its ethics, but from its 
doctrines ; and which address not themselves to 
man's mere intellectual sense of right, but to his 
spiritual nature. These truths do not so much 
regulate human conduct between man and man, 
as they open an experimental intercourse be- 
tween man and his Maker. They involve 
social intercourse with God. The other class of 
truths involve more directly our social relations 
to our fellows. 

The pulpit, in insisting upon these spiritual 
verities that meet the want of our spiritual 
natures, is generally too technical, obsolete, 
given to a trite sameness of expression, and 
sadly wanting in illustration. By being too tech- 
nical, we mean, that it is wont to content itself 
by quoting some of the language of the '^ twenty- 
five articles," the standard authorities, and ap- 
propriate passages of Scripture. This, after all, 
we apprehend, to the popular mind, is neither 
explaining nor expounding. It is well enough, 



PLAN OF RESISTANCE PROPOSED. 47 

as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. 
It is wanting in adaptation, in that sense to which 
we give the phrase of " up with the times," and, 
in illustration, in that sense in which truth 
should be illustrated by the things of the present 
with which men's thoughts are familiar. 

Our Saviour's parables illustrate the careful 
reference he always had in his teaching to the 
principle just named. We will attempt to il- 
lustrate what we mean by an illustration that 
particularly interests, because it includes what 
was before in the mind of the hearer. Is the 
operation of the Divine Spirit, for in-stance, upon 
man's moral nature, changing the disposition 
thereof, objected to, on account of its inconceiv- 
ableness or profound mystery? Let the force 
of the objection be broken by an analogy from 
the natural world. How happens it, the speak- 
er may say, that light, the most imponderable 
and subtle of all substances, reveals its red in 
the rose, its white in the lily, its blue in the 
violet, compounds itself into every hue of beau- 
ty in the pride of spring, and stains with vermil- 
ion or silvery whiteness the clouds of the sky ? 
Who can conceive of this process, and yet, who 
dare deny the facts? And these facts become 
the more striking, when it is remembered that 



48 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

the virgin petals of the lily of to-day, were yes- 
terday but the mud of the swamp. Or, take 
another illustration from the wondrous doings of 
that most incomprehensible of physical agents, 
electricity. Its wonders have now become 
familiar to the minds of everybody. And, that 
it does traverse a continent, or an ocean, in a 
time too short for measurement; that it per- 
vades with unimpeded ease, huge masses of 
iron ; that it drops through mountains of rock 
with infinitely more ease than our volition can 
move us through an open door, are all facts 
which a schoohboy, now, does not think of de- 
nying. But these are but physical agents, pro- 
ducing visible and wonderful results. To dis- 
card them, because the manner in which it is 
done lies beyond the power of our analysis, or 
comprehension, would be worse than stupidity. 
But if such things are true of natural agents, 
what are we not to expect of spiritual agents? 
[f matter does thus operate upon matter, is it 
unreasonable to suppose that mind may not so 
operate upon mind as to produce phenomena 
correspondingly wonderful ? And who does not 
know that it is but an experimental fact, that 
even finite mind does influence mind with a 
transforming power often nearly analogous to 



PLAN OF RESISTANCE PROPOSED. 49 

that which natural agents produce before our 
eyes in the opening bud. But, if we rise from 
the mind of man to the mind of God, from the 
spirit of man to the Spirit of God, and presume 
upon the possibility of an intercourse between 
God and man, what results does it become most 
reasonable for us to look for? Why, that our 
minds be purified, renewed, born again, trans- 
formed in their measure into the Divine likeness 
— these, we say, are the results which a legiti- 
mate rationalism would look for. Certainly it is 
not unreasonable to suppose that the mind of 
God and man may be brought into contact, 
when the Spirit of God, like an all-pervasive 
life, touches everything in the vast universe. It 
is, then, but sheer atheism to laugh at spiritual 
regeneration as a mere dogma of the Church, 
discarded by true philosophy ; while it is worse 
than childish to object to anything taught 
in the Scriptural experience of the Christian 
because of its mystery or incomprehensibil- 
ity! 

Now, in some such way as the above, would 
we have the pulpit in its lessons, more immedi- 
ately logical and illustrative, address the popu- 
lar mind. We would have the pulpit commune 
no less with the cross, but at the same time 



50 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIVAL8. 

much more with those " all things which were 
made by Him" the Victim of the cross. The 
pulpit should abound more with illustrations 
fresh from the fountain of nature. The preach- 
er should study nature only second to revelation. 
The facts of natural science should be as famil- 
iar to him as the facts of Bible history. 

" Read nature : nature is a friend to truth ; 
ISTature is Christian, preaches to mankind, 
And bids dead matter aid us in our creed.'' 

It is not a lack of Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, that 
constitutes a scientific want of the pulpit, by 
any means, but a want of a knowledge of the 
natural sciences does; and in no apologetic 
spirit or tone, would we have the duty dis- 
charged. That is, we would not have the pul- 
pit defer, for a moment, to that infidelity that 
secretly, if not avowedly, challenges these spirit- 
ual verities. But we would have it demon- 
strated that these spiritual verities are actually 
the highest type of a legitimate rationalism. 
Such a coming at the mind, we think, would 
excite thought, and while the word was 
preached, it 'would also be expounded in a 
manner which gathered freshness from the liv- 
ing present. We think, if we mistake not, that 



PLAN OF RESISTANCE PROPOSED. 61 

the pulpit must swing itself loose more from the 
technical and the obsolete, in this momentous 
department of theology. But, by all means, let 
it not degenerate into a mere scholarly exhibi- 
tion of scientific facts, though important they 
may be in the illustration of the holy record. 
Let not preaching degenerate into philosophiz- 
ing, but let philosophy ever keep her place as a 
servant. The messenger of the pulpit has mis- 
taken his mission whenever he presumes it is 
primarily an intellectual one. Effort should be 
made always to move the heart, always to stir 
the affections, always to awaken deep emotions 
in alliance with spiritual truths. Were we on 
a hymeneal errand, on a courting excursion, 
we would as soon pay our addresses to Powers's 
statue of the Greek slave, as an excitant of 
our affections, as to go to church and hear 
nothing but a purely scientific and intellect- 
ual harangue. Intellect, of course, must be 
there, otherwise the sermon is wanting in in- 
telligence. Science, of course, must be there, 
otherwise we are annoyed with the blunders 
of the speaker. But these are but the scaffold- 
ing of the builder. There must be life, the life 
of emotion occasioned by the speaker's com- 
munion with God. The Holy Ghost must be 



52 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

there, of which the speaker is but a medium of 
intercourse between Heaven and his people : 
"And my speech and my preaching was not 
with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in 
demonstration of the Spirit, and of power." 



PREACH JESUS. S3 



CHAPTEE YI. 

PREACH JESUS. 

THE CENTRAL GLORY OP THE UNIVERSE — THE WORLD'S GREAT 

WANT JESUS MUST BE PREACHED, OR THE PULPIT WILL 

BECOME EXTINCT BOSTON UNITARIANISM UNION BETWEEN 

CHRIST AND HIS MINISTERS ILLUSTRATED — THE CROSS IN- 
VESTED WITH STUPENDOUS EVIDENCES MERITLESSNESS OP 

man's RIGHTEOUSNESS HOW THE SINNER IS SAVED THE 

TRUE PROTESTANT IDEA — HOW GOD DESCENDS TO MAn's CA- 
PACITY — THE INCARNATION — CHRIST ALWAYS THE PREACHER's 
THEME. 

In our last, we were touching upon the duty of 
the pulpit in a given case, in the promotion of 
revivals. A general hint was all that we in- 
dulged in, and all that we intended, ere we 
passed to the employment of measures by the 
Church. We may linger in the pulpit long 
enough to insist upon a common, and yet au- 
gustly momentous and precious topic. 

The pole-star of the pulpit is the cross. The 
central idea of the Bible is Jesus. The intelli- 
gent soul of the world's history is the idea of the 
world's Saviour. History would be without 
order. Providence without polarity, but for Cal- 
vary. Kedemption is the sweet influence of the 



54: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

Pleiades, melting in healing odors over the 
wounded, dying race, amid the wandering mu- 
sic of the stars of the morning ; and which faith 
only can hear, faith only can see, and faith only 
can feel. Redemption is the great law of grav 
itation in the moral world, mysteriously attract- 
ing it onward to its destiny, upward to its God. 
Redemption means reconciliation by virtue of a 
reason. It is the great, felt want of humanity. 
"How shall we come before God, and where- 
withal can we bow ourselves before the high God, 
and how can man be just w^ith God ?" have con- 
stituted the outcry of the crushed nations, with 
^ which they have ever filled the ear of the leaden, 
lazy-footed ages. In the absence of satisfactory 
answers to these questions, foolish man has at- 
tempted to invent answers. What, otherwise, 
mean the smoking altars of paganism, the heca- 
tombs of victims at the shrine of idols ? What 
else mean those self-immolations, self-inflicted 
tortures, and long and painful pilgrimages, 
which the imperfect annals of man without a 
Bible are constantly disclosing ? The fact is, a 
consciousness of guilt, a self-disapproval, and a 
sense of danger, are universal to humanity. 
These dark shadows fall upon his soul every- 
where, (darker at certain seasons than others,) 



PREACH JESUS. 55 

as certainly as is his shadow cast from him in 
the sunh*ght. Man is instinctively prepared to 
hear of a Saviour. His condition in the world 
is to him as "The voice of one crying in the 
wilderness," saying, "Where is he of whom 
Moses in the law and the prophets did write ?" 
The popular heart feels that a sermon without 
a Saviour is a solecism. The preacher who 
preaches most about Jesus and the resurrection, 
other things being equal, will have the largest 
and most delighted audiences. It is a striking 
fact, and yet one often overlooked, that God 
himself has so arranged, that the principal theme 
of the pulpit, when properly evolved, will al- 
ways be found the most popular. Men never 
complain of hearing too much from the pulpit 
about Jesus Christ. And it is the evangelical 
pulpits of the land which alone can succeed in 
keeping up a congregation. Boston Unitarian- 
ism is in the yellow leat, and, but for its wealth 
and social powers, the sentimentality, poetry, 
and learning of its pulpit, would to-day have 
been numbered among the historic follies of 
another attempt to perpetuate the public wor- 
ship of God on earth, without insisting, also, 
that men ought to worship at the manger and 
at the cross. The same may be said of Christ- 



66 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

ianism, Arianism, and various other types of 
religious error. But even Unitarianism is far 
from crying after the man Christ Jesus, '* Cru- 
cify him, crucify him !" " away with such a man 
from the earth !" If, in their creed, Jesus Christ 
be not God, he is, nevertheless, the most exalted 
of creatures — a God-revealed model of perfect 
humanity. If he did not die to save the sinner, 
he died as the noblest of martyrs, in the defense 
of the truth. Now, this error of making the 
Saviour human, and no more, and investing his 
death with the glories of martyrdom, and no 
more, has not been without its power. It has 
imparted to that pulpit, at least, a dramatic effect. 
The themes of that pulpit have thus not been 
without their principal hero. Romance and 
chivalry, or something analogous to these quali- 
ties, have lent to the desk an attraction. Let 
even this view of Christ be ignored, and the 
pulpit sink to the mere defender of theism, 
become deistic, the doler-out of mere ethical 
lessons, sanctioned, indeed, by God, and im- 
pressed by the motives of immortality, and how 
soon would such a sect of religionists become 
extinct'! 

The pulpit, without Christ, becomes secular- 
ized, sinks to the level of common things. It 



PREACH JESUS. 67 

loses, in fact and in the minds of men, all its 
unearthly, its peculiarity of power, and only be- 
comes a thing of preference, from mere accident 
or factitious circumstances. A Christless pulpit 
is as Eden would have been without the river 
to " water the garden." The life-imparting in- 
timacy between Christ and his Church, between 
Christ and his ministers, is radiantly illustrated 
in the first chapter of the Revelation of St. John : 
" Clothed with a garment down to the feet, and 
girt about the paps with a golden girdle, [sym- 
bolic of his priestly office.] His head and his 
hair were white like wool, as white as snow ; 
and his eyes were as a flame of fire ; and his feet 
like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a 
furnace; and his voice as the sound of many 
waters ;" he is represented as being in the midst 
of the " seven golden candlesticks," which were 
the seven Churches of Asia, and which were 
selected as generic of the Church in all ages. 
The seven pastors were " seven stars, which he 
held in his right liand, while out of his mouth 
went a sharp, two-edged sword, and his counte- 
nance was as the sun shining in his strength !" O 
blessed Jesus ! how near thou art to thy people, 
and yet they see thee not ! How certainly do 
thy footfalls waken the echoes of the rudest, the 



58 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVITALS. 

wild wood sanctuary, or float in sacred accents 
through the aisles of the houses erected for thee, 
and yet, how dull their ears of hearing ! How 
certainly dost thou lead thy embassadors by the 
hand, and yet, with what timid and faltering 
steps do they follow ! 

And now, brothers, in the inventory of good 
things on which we discourse weekly from the 
pulpit, let us not forget to preach Jesus. And 
Jesus first, not subordinately. A system of the- 
ology, without Jesus in the center, would be as a 
system of solar astronomy that left out the sun. 
" I am the way, the truth, and the life." The 
name of Jesus is the revolted sinner's password 
on his return to God. His death is the reason 
why God can be just, and yet the justifier of 
every one that believeth in his death. His 
Divinity, which never died, but only suffered a 
voluntary obscuration of its glory, not only im- 
parts to the humanity, in which it saw fit to 
temple itself, an awful sacredness, and to the 
blood of that humanity an everywhere-reaching 
efficaciousness, but it furnishes an assurance to 
the sinner that there could be no mistake about 
the offering up of the great sin-offering for the 
world, at Jerusalem, many centuries ago, about 
the time of the celebration of the symbol of that 



PREACH JESrS. 59 

event, the Jewish passover. That God presided 
at the cross, and at the grave, he did more than 
to set his bow in the heavens, as at the flood, to 
prove. As then, he registered the evidence of 
his presence upon the pages of nature ; the sun 
withheld his light, and supernatural darkness 
prevailed ; earthquakes rent the rocks and the 
temple's vail, and the long-buried dead were 
made to live again after his resurrection. Stu- 
pendous wonders ! And yet they are but worthy 
witnesses, that God, in unerring wisdom and 
mercy, had " provided himself a sacrifice." Yes, 
for himself, and for man also. Henceforth, the 
sinner needs no further sacrifice. Let all altars 
but the cross be leveled down. It is enough. 
Jesus hath " tasted death for every man." The 
sinner is saved, not because he submits to pen- 
ance, not because he inflicts suff'ering upon 
another, but because Jesus " hath borne our 
sins in his own body on the tree." The sinner is 
saved, not hecause he repents; not because he 
prays ; not because he believes ; not by works 
of righteousness which he hath done, for all these 
are but the voluntary acts of appropriating pro- 
vided mercies, but because Christ died, ''the 
just for the unjust, to bring us to God." In 
repentance there can be no merit, because this 



60 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEYIVALS. 

does no more than dignify humanity. In belief 
there can be no merit, because no man ought to 
be rewarded for believing that which is true. 
In doing right, there can be no merit, for this is 
best for human nature under all circumstances. 
Such voluntary acts on the sinner's part, then, 
which he may be induced to perform by the 
teachings of the holy Gospel, and aided to per- 
form by the Spirit, which is mercifully given to 
him to enable him to overcome the bent of his 
nature toward evil, and to balance against the 
infusion of Satanic influence, such voluntary 
acts on the sinner's part, we say, only bring him 
just where the gift of eternal salvation is. "By 
grace are ye saved, through faith ; and that not 
of yourselves ; it is the gift of God ; not of works, 
lest any man should boast." This blessed doc- 
trine of a salvation free for all, and, consequently, 
can neither be merited nor monopolized by any, 
is the great central luminary in the firmament 
of Protestantism. No wonder that it shook the 
priest-ridden world like an earthquake, when, 
from being so long lost to it, it was discovered 
by Luther, apparently accidentally. It will yet 
shake the heads of pseudo Churches from their 
thrones, and popes from their chairs. It will 
shake the earth, ay, and heaven too ! It will 



PREACH JESU8. 61 

shake the earth till it sift out its errors, and then 
make eternity's long aisles tremulous to the song 
of its triumphs, and the far-off new-born worlds 
to clap their hands to the greetings of the spread- 
ing music ! 

O, how blessed and self-commendatory is this 
truth. It exalts the king and the beggar to the 
same common level, empowering each with the 
privilege of settling his spiritual and immortal 
concerns with his Maker, without the interposi- 
tion of a fallible, and, it may be, sinister inter- 
mediate. It is the republicanism of Christ's 
spiritual kingdom. '' If the Son shall make you 
free, you shall be free indeed." And yet, para- 
doxical as it may at first sound, man, in the bud- 
dings of his first thinkings of salvation, is 
brought directly in contact with his •fellow," 
his kindly sympathetic fellow, a priest, "who 
can be touched with the feelings of his infirmi- 
ties." In accommodation to that finite mind 
that cannot grasp or locate its confidence upon 
a God that is an everywhere present Spirit, 
much easier than one perishing for want of 
breath can grasp the four winds in his embrace, 
God embodies himself in the ma7i Christ Jesus, 
and thus, as it were, locates his presence where 
local thoughts can come unto him ; and so at- 



62 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

tempers his glory, tliat we are not intiaiidated 
in our approaches, and so blends his love with 
the sympathies of our common humanity, that, 
while we are found in kindred affinity with the 
Son of God, and in natural sympathy with his 
sufferings, and admiration for the sublime moral 
beauty of his character, through this door which 
God has thus opened in our hearts, he himself 
enters; and, as thought expands and faith in- 
creases, the awakened sinner, like the convinced 
Thomas, exclaims of the man Christ Jesus, " My 
Lord and my God !" God was manifested in the 
flesh. And one of the blessed facts in the mys- 
tery of this manifestation is, that God literally 
speaks to us in the person of our own nature ; 
weeps in our presence such tears as we weep ; 
touches us with a hand of flesh, that he may lay 
upon our hearts the hand of the Spirit. As man, 
our Saviour is one oi us. As God, he is one of 
the Holy Three. To read the holy Gospel is to 
read the biography of the Godhead. God's will 
is not only here revealed, but his character con- 
creted in sinless humanity : and yet, that 
humanity suffering as a sinner, that believing 
sinners might escape the damnation of hell. 

This blessed theme can never be tame. It 
imparts to pulpit truth all the naturalism of 



PREACH JESUS. 63 

heaven, tlie eternal freshness of Divinity. Every 
sermon, then, should be preached in the shadow 
of the cross. Like the incense, which burned 
perpetually before the Lord in the sanctuary, 
every sermon should be odorous with the doc- 
trines of Jesus. Nor should we think the theme 
incapable of new modes of presentation, incapa- 
ble of new and striking illustrations. Not only is 
the theme, like certain forms of life, incapable 
of losing its interest by familiarity, but it is ca- 
pable of infinite development. It is a fountain 
of thoughts, as exhaustless as the Divine mind, 
capable of being expressed by an infinite variety 
of wordings. The whole Bible is as full of the 
Spirit of Christ, in every text, sentence, proper 
name, word, and syllable, as is the whole body 
of a living man full of life. The geologist might 
as well expect to dig through some rock or strata, 
and find some spot, some object, in the ingre- 
dients of the globe, unpervaded with the laws of 
gravitation, as might the Bible student expect 
to find some desert waste in its pages, unmarked 
by the footsteps of Him whose goings forth have 
been from everlasting, and whose last crowning 
act was to come into humanity, and down into 
the world, to seek and to save that which was 
lost. 



64 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

Brethren of the pulpit, in the promotion of 
revivals, intensify your sermons by refusing 
more and more to know anything among men 
but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Men will 
welcome the doctrine, for man instinctively feels 
the need of help from a superior power, without 
and above him. All men want to be saved, 
and, therefore, want some one to save them. 
But, after all, the difficulty lies in getting men 
to receive the Saviour of the Gospel, in persuad- 
ing men to believe that this is the only true 
Saviour, and the only true God. O Jesus ! hast 
thou yet found faith on the earth ? Increase in 
us, that believe the power of that grace, and 
overcome by thy Spirit the obstinacy of unbelief 
in others! 



THE OLASS-MEEXma. 6S 



CHAPTEE VIL 

THE CLASS-MEETING. 

WORKING THE SOCIAL AND SYMPATHETIC PRINCIPLE — MAN MORE 
SOCIAL AS HE BECOMES MORE RELIOIOUS — THE FOLLY OP 

ANCHORITISM THE CLASS-MEETING THE CLASS-MEETING AS 

THE MEANS OF CONSECRATING THE SOCIAL PRINCIPLE 

CLASS-MEETINGS SUPPLY A NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL WANT 

THEIR PHILOSOPHY ILLUSTRATED THE CONVERSATION OF THE 

CLASS-ROOM — THE RECLAIMING POWER OF CLASS-MEETINGS — 
IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSATION. 

In our last, we meagerly glanced at the prom- 
inence that should at all times be given by the 
pulpit to the ever-blessed doctrine of atonement. 
Amid the vast variety of pulpit themes, we 
maintained that Christ, like the guiding banner 
of a battling host, or like the symbolic serpent 
amid the smitten camp of Israel, should have a 
paramount prominence. 

In further consideration of the obstacles to be 
overcome, in the prosecution of revivals, we pass 
now from the pulpit to the Church ; and hav- 
ing, in former pages, spoken with some perti- 
nence of the duty of pei'sonal religion, (the ne- 
cessity of stated, incessant, wrestling, private 

5 



66 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

prayer,) we come now to offer a thought or two 
on the duty of working the sympathetic and 
social principle. 

" It is not good for man to be alone." Man 
was never made to act with vigor in a condition 
of isolation. Man, individually, is not the com- 
plement of humanity. To turn hermit, for any 
purpose, is to act the madman, and stultify and 
dwarf all progress. The biggest of all fools 
were those, in the dark ages, who turned her- 
mits for the kingdom of heaven's sake. The 
sympathetic and social feelings are not mere 
accidents of human nature; they are cardinal 
and rational essentials. Man always becomes 
the more social as he becomes the more enlight- 
ened and refined ; the more social as he becomes 
the more like his Maker. True religion is ever 
subordinating selfishness to the action of the 
social feelings. This is the Eden soil in which 
the missionary tree, the leaves of which are for 
the healing of the nations, grows so luxuriantly. 
Like the patriarch of old, from being blessed, 
the Christian is ever seeking how he may become 
a blessing. " I will bless thee : and thou shalt 
be a blessing." 

But how, as Church members, may we best 
work this principle for purposes of mutual 



THE CLASS-MEETING. 67 

spiritual invigoration, edification, felicitation, 
and Church aggression? As Methodists, we 
may appropriately call attention here to class- 
meetings. Not that we would discuss the sub- 
ject of class-meetings in their conventional or 
disciplinary relations. It is foreign to our pur- 
pose to lug in the question here, w^hether 
attendance upon class-meetings should or should 
not be made a test of membership, attendance 
upon class-meetings made disciplinarily coercive, 
or left optional with the communicant. It is the 
principle which underlies class-meetings that we 
wish now particularly to consider. This princi- 
ple, emphatically, is the social principle ; and 
class-meeting is but a provision for the employ- 
ment and consecration of the social principle 
for religious purposes; and that this principle 
should be so employed, we think no one, upon a 
moment's reflection, can doubt. Other Churches 
may employ this principle in modes the best 
adapted to their tastes, prejudices, or views 
of propriety. We take it for granted, that 
the employment of this principle in a man- 
ner that answers the end of our class-meet- 
ings, is everywhere essential to the unity 
of Christianhood, the communion of the saints, 
and the strength of the Church. We have a 



68 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

mode of employing it which seems to have orig- 
inated with Wesley, providentially, and to have 
become so inaugurated in form in Methodism, 
as to have answered the desired end most hap- 
pily. What Methodist who has tried the ex- 
periment, will pretend to say that he has never 
been made the recipient of great good in the 
class-meeting? The provision in our Church 
for the weekly meeting of the class, is at once 
a confession of a great confidence in the power 
of social unity as an element of a Church's 
strength. It is a wholesome, disciplinary safe- 
guard against isolation and individualism among 
Church members, and in matters of religion. It 
happily provides for a personal acquaintance 
among the membership. Acquaintance is ne- 
cessary to mutual interests, the first step toward 
friendship ; and friendship is but the outer 
court of the holy temple of brotherly love. 
The class-meeting provides specially for religious 
conversation. It extends this blessed privilege 
to the humblest. It throws around the weak 
and the unlearned (the inexperienced) the pro- 
tection of privacy, the encouragement of confi- 
dence, and secures to him access to riper expe- 
rience and maturer wisdom. Tlie strong here 
are made to bear the infirmities of the weak, 



THE CLASS-MEETING. 69 

until the weak become strong. Nor is the 
religious conversation of the class-room want- 
ing in specificness. It is sacredly guarded, 
from the very nature of the institution, the or- 
ganic law of the Church, from being miscella- 
neous, diff iisive, or controversial in its character. 
The leader is to see each member in his class 
once a week, to inquire how his soul prospers. 
Personal experience, then, is the theme of con- 
versation in the class-room. And there is a 
marked peculiarity about the conversation of 
the class-room. It is not given to human nature 
for man not to feel, first and foremost, the 
highest possible interest in himself. This is 
essential to self-preservation. This may exist 
without selfishness; and, in this sense, the 
love of self is made the highest standard of 
man's love to another. " Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." 

We have said, that in the specificness and 
character of the sacred conversation of the class- 
room, there is a peculiarity. And we might 
have said (for this is what we mean, and our 
meaning shall be illustrated in a moment) that 
this peculiarity is admirably adapted to the 
awakening of social sympathy, and to the 
working with vigor of the social principle for 



f HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

the promotion of religious ends. Every man 
knows that nothing delights him more, or 
awakens his emotions sooner, than to rehearse, 
to eager listeners, chapters of his own experience. 
Is it the soldier, who has encountered death in a 
thousand forms, and yet escaped it ? How im- 
passionately eloquent does he grow over ac- 
count of contending armies ! How startlingly 
descriptive does he become in portraying the 
dreadful scene, when the excitement of the con- 
flict was over, and the dead strewed the field for 
miles ! the dying pierced the air with their 
shrieks; the desolating flame shot up into heaven 
from vanquished cities melting away into smoke; 
the random gun was heard in the distance, from 
the retreating foe, as troops of pursuers hung on 
their rear, while, anon, the weary drum beat the 
death-thinned ranks to quarters, that the living 
might be distinguished from the dying, and 
preparation be made for that most savage and 
yet saddest of all hours, when a few hundred 
powder-blackened and blood-besmeared survivors 
should be detailed to dig pits in which to heap 
the slain. How, we say, does the old and crip- 
pled soldier become reanimated, almost rejuve- 
nated, as he recounts, for the thousandth time, 
these dread scenes through which he has passed ! 



THE CLASS-MEETING. 71 

Personal experience is so near a part of our- 
selves, that it never becomes devoid of interest. 
The sailor, also, will grow impassioned over de- 
scriptions of sea adventure and marine disaster. 
We hear the roar of the storm in his eloquence ; 
we see the mountain billows lifting their crested 
tops to the clouds ; we hear the creak of the 
foundering vessel, the scream of the despairing, 
and the crash of her masts. Our pioneer 
fathers, also, how love they to recount the scenes 
of other days, and to live over again, in magic 
memory, and by the power of retrospect, that 
life of wild adventure amid unshorn forests, 
trials and dangers, struggles and triumphs, which 
excited to effort, and hastened the more halcy- 
on and eligible days of the present. Like Israel, 
they then dwelt in tents ; but now, like Israel 
in the days of David and Solomon, they dwell 
in ceiled houses, and sit, each under his own 
vine and fig-tree, no one daring to molest or 
make afraid. But these are but secular expe- 
riences, and yet they delight with the charm 
of the drama. The heart is led captive by their 
power. It is mutually a privilege to hear and 
to relate them. 

It is a familiar law of our nature, that what 
interests us highly, we love to speak of fre- 



72 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

quently, and never fail to feel the inspiration of 
the theme. In worldly matters, men never keep 
silent, or secrets, only from sinister or mercenary 
motives. The emigrant dwells incessantly upon 
the better land in the West, and elates in the 
prospect of realizing improved fortunes. The 
successful speculator, in the veriest self-defense, 
in the indulgence of a feeling which it gives him 
relief to embody in words, waxes warm as he 
recounts his success. ISTow, were no provision 
made in the Church for the mutual relation of 
experience, a great natural wam^t would have 
heen unprovided for. And it is but a sad proof 
of the want of interest which Christians feel, 
when they do not delight both in hearing and 
relating their Christian experience. Did they 
but think and feel more upon the subject of 
religion, it would be unnatural for them not to 
talk more about it. But as to hear others talk 
about it, has a tendency to excite thought and 
feeling, it can but be regarded as a wise pro- 
vision of the Church, that she has instituted class- 
meetings, and those kindred associations, the 
love-feast, general class, etc. How often are 
they found quickening the lukewarm, reclaiming 
the backslider, opening the eyes of the blind and 
the mouths of the dumb! Who has not often 



THE CLASS-MEETINO. 73 

resorted to them out of respect for the mere dis- 
cipline of the Church, and returned delighted and 
refreshed? "Those that wait upon the Lord 
shall renew their strength." The social law in- 
volved in the case, has operated like the wine 
and oil upon the victim of the thieves, between 
Jerusalem and Jericho. The atmosphere of the 
class-room has been to the dry and deadened 
heart, as the touch of the bones of Elisha upon 
the dead man hastily obtruded into that proph- 
et's sepulcher. The bitter waters of discontent, 
disaffection, surmise, and alienation, have been 
made to feel a sweetening power like the waters 
of Marah, in which Moses threw the healing 
lotion prescribed by God. 

But we digress. We were speaking of the 
grand peculiarity of the conversation of the class- 
room. This peculiarity borrows additional pow- 
er from the consideration that the personal ex- 
perience to which it is confined, is not secular, 
but religious experience. What is the ex- 
perience of the soldier or the sailor, the pioneer 
or the emigrant, to the experience of the soldier 
of the cross, the traveler from the City of De- 
struction to the Celestial City, where death is 
swallowed up of victory, and the shining sisters 
of immortality bid the weary pilgrim welcome, 



74 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

and he will go no more out forever? What 
fiction half so strange as the truth, as portrayed 
in the drapery of fiction, in the dream of the 
victim of Bedford jail? Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
Progress has been unequaled in its popularity, 
simply because it is a truthful diorama of the 
highest life which a man can lead on this earth, 
the Christian's life. In the class-meeting, the 
brother freely discloses his struggles with the 
world, the flesh, and the devil. He dwells upon 
those deeds of heroism performed by one in his 
eftbrts to govern his own spirit. " Greater is he 
that governeth his own spirit, than he that tak- 
eth a city." Not in the spirit of self-exaltation 
does he dwell upon his deeds of success, his 
triumphs over humanity's greatest foe, but gives 
to the Author of helping grace, all the glory. 
How beautiful to witness from week to week, a 
brother's growth in goodness, his progress in 
holiness. What a thrill of congratulation and 
emulation do such testimonials impart to the 
worshiping circle. Nor is it less useful, though 
solemnly sad to hear a backslider, or a fallen 
brother, relate the process of his departure from 
God and duty, how, little by little, first by the 
sin of omission, and then of commission, he re- 
sumed again the road that leadeth to destruction. 



THE CLASS-MEETING. 75 

Confession relieves his own mountain-burdened 
heart, and inspires the brethren with confidence 
to rally again about him to his rescue, and to 
welcome home again, like the father of the prod- 
igal, him who was lost. Another brother in 
broken accents, and in unlettered language it 
may be, may testify to us of the Spirit's workings 
and of the word's whisperings, instinct with life 
by the Spirit — " my words are spirit and life" — in 
a manner that so perfectly corresponds with our 
own experience, that one is made to feel that 
" in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every 
word shall be established." Faith burns with 
increased brightness, as when the half-expiring 
lamp receives a fresh supply of oil, and distinct 
vision seeiQS awfully and yet sweetly near. 
These, brethren, are the Mount Tabor visions of 
our disciplehood, and, like the disciples who re- 
turned from that vision, and descended from that 
mountain height, to encounter new and severer 
trials, we are prepared by these blessings for 
renewed conflicts with the flesh and the world. 

It had not been our design to enter the 
class-room, to reveal its family-like privacies and 
privileges, its blessedness and its glory. But 
what we meant to say, and will now say, is this : 
that Christians, in order to arouse thought upon 



76 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

the subject of religion, in the minds of sinners, 
must have constant living, active thoughts upon 
the subject themselves. And if their minds are 
thus interested, they will seek to tdl'k about it, 
seek to call into action the great social principle 
which constitutes, so far as anything human can, 
the power of the class-meeting. And, brother, 
if morally insensible, if mentally apathetic and 
dumb upon the subject of thy soul's salvation, go 
where you can hear others talk about it ; go, even 
though your heart be not free to it, and their 
conversation shall (and it seldom ever fails to) 
excite an interest in you. 

Finally, as we in our first chapter intimated, 
the first obstacle to a revival, which a Church has 
to overcome, is for Church members to speak 
oftener to one another, and thus revive them- 
selves. More frequent intercourse and converse 
for religious purposes alone, constitute a great 
want of the Church at present. The almost 
universal neglect of attendance on class-meetings 
either in their stated form, or by the working 
of the principle that constitutes their power in 
some form, is the evil day that has fallen upon 
Methodism. 

It can scarcely be said of Methodists now, as 
was said of the godly in the days of Malachi : 



THE CLASS-MEETING. 77 

"Then they that feared the Lord sjpake often one 
to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard 
it ; and a book of remembrance was written be- 
fore him, for them that feared the Lord, and 
that thought upon his name." If, among the 
angels, a special secretary be now employed to 
record the religious conversations of Methodists, 
whether in or out of class-meetings, we fear that 
his office is almost reduced to a sinecure. 
Preachers preach enough upon the subject of 
religion, they preach well enough upon the sub- 
ject, but neither preachers nor people converse 
often enough upon the subject of religion, vital, 
experimental, and spiritual godliness. May God 
grant that our people may again gather around 
the class-room, like the sons of Levi around 
Moses at Mount Sinai, when rebellious Israel 
wandered after the golden calf. 



78 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIVAL8. 



CHAPTER Vin. 

REVIVALS A WANT OF OUR NATURE AND A NE- 
CESSITY OF THE CHURCH. 

DEFINITION OF REVIVALS — ALL HISTORY ILLUSTRATES THEIR NE- 
CESSITY HOW THE QUESTION IS TO BE VIEWED — RELIGION 

AND NATURE TOO OFTEN DIVORCED THE CONDITION OF THE 

CHURCH WITHOUT REVIVALS THE MORAL BEAUTY OF A RE- 
VIVAL MANIFESTATION. 

A REVIVAL implies an increased interest on the 
subject of religion, the sanctification of souls, the 
reclaiming of backsliders, and the conversion of 
sinners. Under such circumstances, religious 
manifestations and demonstrations become ex- 
traordinary, and the Church, in seeking a name 
for such a state of things, adopted the Scriptural 
one of revival. And it would be quite easy to 
show from history, that from the days of the ex- 
odus to the " day of Pentecost," and from thence 
to Luther or Whitefield and Wesley, and from 
Wesley to the days of the Tennetts and Ed- 
wardses of New-England " to this present," that 
such religious ,s^^^5 and religious social conditions 
occurring frequently, or at longer intervals, have 



REVIVALS A WANT OF OUR NATURE, ETC. 79 

been indispensable to the Church's spiritual prog- 
ress, and apparently necessary to prevent her 
from extinction. " But," says one, " the Church 
should seek to be in a condition of continuous 
revival." Certainly she should. This is but the 
utterance of one of those truisms which squints 
toward an apathetic conservatism upon the sub- 
ject of revivals, without removing any of the 
difficulties in the way of their discussion. It is 
a mere begging the question. The Church that 
seeks, and seeks right, to be in a continuous re- 
vival state, will generally be so ; not that we 
believe, for reasons that we shall offer presently, 
that such Church would be at all times equally 
excited. 

In discussing the merits of revivals, or the 
measures to be employed in their promotion, the 
question is not so much what men ought to he^ as 
what human nature is / not so much what the 
Church ought to do, as what the Church can be 
induced to do. The question is one of fact and 
practice, and not of theory and abstraction. We 
aver, then, that it is not the law of human nature 
to be equally excited upon the same subject at 
all times, let the subject be never so momentous. 
Nor is it the law of human nature to be equally 
easily moved by the same subject at all times, 



80 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

though all things may be equal, as to the mode 
of appliance. 

We deem these two propositions too obvious 
to need extended illustration. To assert them is 
to prove them. An equal susceptibility of ex- 
citement at all times, and the continuance of an 
equal measure of interest through every day and 
hour of our being, upon the same subject, 
would, in fact, neutralize all revivals. Man, in- 
dividually, or the Church in the aggregate, 
would present nothing but the manifestation of 
the same unvarying monotony. Nature her- 
self, though governed by laws most stubbornly 
uniform, yet is ever exemplifying a great variety 
and broad contrasts in the fulfillment of the 
same great ofiices. Some summers are longer 
and hotter than others; a greater quantity of 
rain falls during one season than another. Some 
winters are much colder than others. For 
months, the snow of winter may sometimas 
mantle the earth, when another winter may 
occur in which nature omits this crystal robe. 
Now to ask why the Church is not always in a 
state of revival, seems to us much like asking 
why all summers are not precisely of the same 
length and temperature, and all rains and 
dearths are not of the same continuance. 



REVIVALS A WANT OF OUR NATURE, ETC. 81 

Some such religious phenomena, then, as re- 
vivals, in the very nature of things, are always 
to be looked for in the Church, provided nature 
be given fair play, and be not, as it so often has 
been, unnaturally taught. Under the pretense 
of doing honor to religion, it has often been sadly 
divorced from the true philosophy of human 
nature. Man's spiritual emotions, like any other 
class of his emotions, are subject to a law similar 
to that which controls the waves and the winds. 
They retire to gather strength to come again ; 
they lull, that nature may enjoy the deep hush 
and quiet of a calm. Take notice, we do not 
maintain the necessity of backsliding in summer 
in order to be reclaimed by an extra effort in 
winter, which practically seems to be an error 
into whicli some poor souls fall, who are gov- 
erned disproportionately by emotion and feel- 
ing, there being little intelligence and faith pres- 
ent. We repeat, then, that revivals constitute 
the invigorating and natural festivals of the 
Church. Like the world without a Sabbath, 
and like the family without its holidays, its 
sweet remembrances of birthdays, and matri- 
monial days, meetings and greetings, which lift 
the heart of home afresh into third-heaven 

visions, and open the tear fountain as if the 

6 



82 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF KEVIVALS. 

head were waters — without revivals, we say, the 
Church would become an ice palace. Religion 
would petrify into mere forms, a train of bur- 
densome or fantastic ceremonials; a round of 
mere notions in the head, and even these notions 
would lose all their power over thought and re- 
flection, and the very words in which they are 
couched, whether Latin or English, it matters 
not, would not be understood by the devotee. 
This state of things finds its type in Gothic archi- 
tecturCj read prayers, rubrics, the burning of 
wax candles by daylight, and learned divines 
quarreling over an ecclesiastical regalia, which 
would enable them to dispute with the clown his 
place in the "sports of the ring." Its hugest 
concrete, however, is found in Eomanism, the 
nightmare of the nations for so many ages. We 
would rather gaze upon the starting tear that 
traced the rough and bronzed cheek of some 
honest yeoman, and see in that tear a prophetic 
ocean of eternal felicity, in some log school-house, 
in which the spirit of revivals was abroad upon 
its welcome mission, than to look for an hour 
upon the most magnificent pageant that ever 
issued from the gate of St. Peter's. We would 
rather hear a half-suppressed " Halleluiah," a 
" Bless God, O my sou], and forget not all his 



KEVIVALS A WANT OF OUR NATURE, ETC. 83 

benefits," uttered by some aged mother in our 
Israel, followed by the stifled groan and drooped 
head of that young man, for whom she has so 
long prayed; we would rather listen to such 
music, while the faithful preacher presses the 
truth that Jesus saves, and saves now, than to 
stand for an hour amid the magnificent aisles 
and arches of the cathedral of the Bishop of Can- 
terbury, and listen to the deep-toned organ, 
whose combined voices, almost like the seven 
thunders of the throne, sweep in a gust of mere 
artificial and head music up to that God Avho 
alone delighteth in the worship of the broken 
and contrite hearted. There is food for the 
heart in revivals. They are as necessary to the 
health and purity of the Church, as is congenial 
air to the invalid, or salt and soap to the health 
and cleanliness of civilization. 

The proper management of a revival forms no 
small part of that wisdom necessary in the win- 
ning of souls. The law of our nature above 
evolved, may remove some difficulties, and sug- 
gest some useful practical lessons to our brethren. 
Let them remember that revivals are necessities 
of the Church, that the state of things under- 
stood by the term is nothing more than what we 
may expect in view of what human nature is. 



84 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

Let them remember, also, that the Spirit of God 
never forces human nature to the destruction of 
its freedom. To wait, then, for the Spirit of God 
to get the people read j for a revival, before we 
ourselves commence making direct efforts to 
that end, is preposterous. And not to make 
special efforts in religious matters, in view of 
the fact, that man needs seasons of special ex- 
citement upon the subject of religion as well as 
any other, is also absurd. But of the "times 
and the seasons" when these special efforts 
should be commenced, it may require all the 
wise, prayerful scrutiny of the pastor to determ- 
ine. Tliey may be commenced very un- 
timely. Their omission at other times may be 
a great misfortune to the Church. ''He that 
winneth souls is wise." 



PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 85 



CHAPTER IX. 

PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 

THE ADAPTATION OP PROTRACTED MEETINGS TO OUR WANTS — 
ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY MEANS OF GRACE — TAKING 
ADVANTAGE OP TIMES AND SEASONS — PASTORAL ECONOMY — 
OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

If it be true that religion does not change the 
laws of our nature, (regeneration being but a 
change of the heart, from the unnatural to the 
natural — sin being a perversion of our nature,) 
but conforms to them, as the lightning, that 
strikes the tree, follows the grain of the wood ; 
and if it be true that, in religious matters, the 
interest and excitement of Christians are govern- 
ed to some extent, as in other matters, and are 
subject to ebbs and flows, to seasons of less and 
seasons of greater fervor, as was demonstrated 
in the last chapter, then must the services of the 
Church be conformed to this state of things. To 
the ordinary means of grace must sometimes be 
added the extraordinary. Stated meetings will 
sometimes need to be protracted. Protracted 



86 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

meetings, then, have their foundations in the 
very nature of the case. A protracted meeting 
differs, after all, from the ordinary means of 
grace only in this : it consists of more frequently 
employing the means of grace, of appointing 
meetings with shorter intervals between them. 
It occurs to us, from many considerations, that 
this is a most wise course. We may name a 
few of these considerations. The ofHciating 
preacher may detect in his audience a more 
than ordinary disposition to hear the word. 
Secondly, it may be a season of the year of 
comparative leisure. Commerce is not hurried, 
navigation is closed, winter reigns over the 
farmer's fields, and he hibernates upon the su- 
perabundance of the last season ; or, it may be 
one of those seasons (rather rare seasons nowa- 
days !) when the public mind is comparatively 
free from a state of qui vive and solicitude, 
owing to events at Washington, Kanzas, or the 
Crimea, and to which excitement every flash of 
the telegraph makes a new contribution. Or 
the members of the Church themselves may re- 
quest of the pastor the privileges of such ex- 
tended services, and special efforts for the good 
of their own souls, and to enable them more 
satisfactorily, and with greater boldness, to dis- 



PROTRACTED MEETESTaS. 87 

charge those duties which they owe to uncon- 
verted children, kindred, and neighbors. Or 
the pastor, fully awake to the fact that a 
season of leisure is always a season of levity; 
a season of routs, soirees^ balls, frolics, noctur- 
nal excursions, etc., and that such a state of 
things not only needs extraordinary effort as a 
counteracting check, but that protracted meet- 
ings may then become necessary to keep Chris- 
tians out of temptation and mischief. Now, of 
one or all of these circumstances, the pastor may 
desire to take advantage. Spiritual economy in 
a pastor is a mark of great wisdom. It is often 
that Satan can be checkmated in no other way. 
To take advantage of our delinquency, or want 
of alertness, is an old trick of the devil. He 
sowed the tares among the wheat " while men 
slept." Wise is he in winning souls, who suc- 
cessfully employs similar tactics. The devil is 
not omnipresent, though human depravity is. 
How far we may practically calculate upon this 
fact we do not undertake to say. But we will 
say, that every pastor whose Church is growing, 
and not dying on his hands, will detect occasions 
when the necessity of employing extraordinary 
efforts will seem most clearly indicated ; and in 
8ucb C£^ses such meetings are seldprn, jf ever, 



05 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

failures. A pastor should be a careful reader of 
the esjprit de corjps of his Church and congrega- 
tion, of the moral physiognomy, so to speak, of 
the community in which he labors. He should 
study it as a patient in danger of death, eternal 
death ; study it with that careful scrutiny with 
which the conscientious, scientific, and logical 
physician studies the symptoms of some illustri- 
ous patient. How carefully does he ponder over 
the number of pulse-beats in a minute ! What 
studious comparisons and deductions does he 
make from the beating of the heart, the color 
and temperature of the skin, or the reports of 
the stethoscope to the ear! How carefully does 
he watch the sun in the heavens, and the ther- 
mometer on the wall, that he may make proper 
allowance for the influence of atmospheric 
clianges upon the nervous system ! With equal 
scrutiny, and from more exalted motives, should 
the pastor study the spiritual condition of his 
flock, and look to occurring circumstances as 
affecting it more or less friendly. Some neigh- 
borhood calamity; the prevalence of a dread 
epidemic saddening the thoughts of men, and 
turning them toward eternity ; the hand of God 
in an especially-marked manner, either in judg- 
ment or mercy, may be taken advantage of by 



PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 89 

the pastor, as indicative of the " set time " for 
God to favor Zion. 

Nearly all the arguments against protracted 
meetings which we ever heard or read, were 
based upon their abuse. Such arguments are 
often plausible, but seldom legitimate. There is 
no good thing in the world that men do not 
abuse, and it would seem that the better the 
thing, the more liable to abuse. Now, we 
maintain that there are very few good things, if 
any, which ought to be abandoned because sub- 
ject to abuse; while, if we should abandon 
everything that was subject to abuse, we would 
have nothing left. It is objected to protracted 
meetings, that the extraordinary intensification 
of the means of grace which they imply, causes 
our people to undervalue the ordinary means of 
grace. Such may sometimes be the case, but 
ought not to be, and when so, it is but another of 
those many instances so frequently occurring, in 
which the pastor will find it necessary to teach 
his people the " way of the Lord more perfectly." 
We regret to mention, however, that but too 
much reason is often given for this objection, 
by the conduct of pastors and Christians tliem- 
selves. With them, practically, the ordinary 
means of grace are attended to with extraordin- 



90 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS, 

ary coldness and indifference — their occurrence 
looked to as a matter-of-course thing, and the 
duties they require are to be attended to as a 
kind of penance or trade. In the genuine spirit 
of the meeting, no difference should be allow- 
ed to exist between the ordinary Sabbath-day 
service, or the weekly prayer-meeting, and 
the meeting that may have lasted a week. 
Christians should always be in earnest in the 
service of God. And, dear brethren in the min- 
istry, this earnestness must, and will, always 
take its key-note from the pulpit. 

Another objection is, that the long-continued 
excitement consequent upon protracted meet- 
ings, is wont to be followed by a sad reaction, a 
season of great spiritual languor and dullness. 
We are persuaded that this objection is often 
very much magnified. In an experience of 
twenty years, we have never witnessed the re- 
sults charged in the objection, unless it be in 
those individual instances of persons being pe- 
culiarly given to an excess of the emotional, and 
who have been betrayed into excesses and ex- 
travagances. Such persons are rather the ex- 
emplifications of the exceptions of the rule that 
governs in the case, than the rule. Such indi- 
viduals, also, as every one knows, possess an 



PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 91 

idiosyncrasy of constitution, and are always ab- 
normal in the social mass. And, if they drop 
spiritually dead soon after a protracted meeting, 
this seems to be their natural condition, and, but 
for the protracted meeting, they would never be 
spiritually alive. We are not at all disposed to 
calculate the chances of the salvation of such, 
but we have sometimes thought that these 
chances might be much increased, should their 
demise occur in a protracted meeting, camp- 
meeting, or some other occasion of unusual re- 
ligious excitement. For, unless favored at death 
with this special start toward the good world — 
unless, like Moses, they die upon the mountain- 
top, they may never reach the gates of the new 
Jerusalem. It may be all to the credit of pro- 
tracted meetings, and their cognate meetings, 
that they, so far, make provision for such per- 
sons. And as to the reaction objected to, so far 
as it relates to the Church generally, it may be 
but the necessary result of cause and effect, and 
in no wise an unhealthy reaction. For we 
again repeat, that, taking our nature as it is, we 
are always to look for ot^bs and flows, for action 
and reaction. And the reaction, when healthy, 
is as necessary as the action, and both together 
are infinitely preferable to that spiritual dull- 



93 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

ness, lukewarmness, and formality, that grow 
so rapidly in a Church, in the absence of occa- 
sional, special, and protracted religious effort, 
and for which such efforts seem the only 
specific. 



PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 93 



CHAPTER X. 

PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 

EXTRAVAGANT DEMONSTRATIONS — CORRECT TEACHING NEEDED — 

RELIGIOUS RESPONSES LET ALL METHODISTS SAY " AMEN '* 

ALL CORNERS SHOULD BE "AMEN CORNERS" OBJECTIONS 

ANSWERED THE INVETERATE FAULT-FINDER — -NOTHING HU- 
MAN PERFECT APOSTASIES IN REVIVALS — ■ THEIR OCCURRENCE 

CONSIDERED THE MORAL STATE OF THE BACKSLIDER NO 

ONE EVER MADE WORSE BY CONVERSION THE BACKSLIDER THE 

FIRST TO BE RE-CONVERTED. 

Protracted meetings have been objected to, be- 
cause many of the worshipers have often lost 
sight of religion, and religious decorum and order, 
and been betrayed into extravagances, both of 
speech and " bodily exercise," unbecoming the 
house of God. Our answer is, that, in the 
matter of spiritual manifestations, as there is a 
" diversity of gifts," we would set ourself up as 
a judge of these extravagances, with very great 
caution. Our judgment of order, in the house 
of God, under such circumstances, may be very 
erroneous. Nature, in numberless instances, pre- 
sents to the eye nothing but a scene of confusion 
and havoc, where the most perfect order reigns, 



94 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEYIVALS. 

and the greatest good is to be the result. "We 
will venture to say, however, that extravagances 
have occurred at such meetings, that might 
easily have been prevented by the right kind of 
teaching. Somehow or other, some have con- 
founded the disciplining of the emotions with 
the "quenching of the Spirit." The pulpit, at 
times, has very erroneously taught, that when 
the Christian's spiritual emotions are struggling 
for vent or expression, it is never safe not to 
cry out or shout, whatever the surrounding cir- 
cumstances may be, lest, by so doing, the Spirit 
be grieved. ]S'ow, weak and nervous persons, 
taking the advantage of such a sentiment, have 
been often found annoying fellow-worshipers, 
and seriously interfering with the edification of 
the meeting, by the untimeliness and obtrusive- 
ness of their demonstrations of joy. The brother 
or sister that must needs shout aloud for an hour, 
and that hour the hour of preaching, and who 
has been indulged in doing so under the preten- 
sion that it was eminently his or her duty to do 
so, and that neither could help it, is simply to be 
pitied more than to be blamed. That such can 
help it, every reflecting person has come to be- 
lieve. That they think they cannot or dare not 
help it, no one for a moment doubts. But this 



PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 95 

is the result either of erroneous teaching, or of 
the absence of all teaching upon the subject. 
Let us be understood. We doubt not for a mo- 
ment that the power of the Holy Ghost may, 
sometimes, prompt involuntarily to a momentary 
shout, and when of this type, we love to hear it 
at any time. But the idea that it will urge in- 
voluntarily to a continuous squall for half an 
hour, is simply ridiculous. We are not " opposed 
to shouting " at religious meetings, but we are 
opposed to unnatural and fanatical shouting. 
And as to the hearty " Amen," (the frequent 
religious response,) when these manifestations 
of warmth and earnestness shall have ceased in 
the M. E. Church, then will her pure gold have 
become very dim, and her glory, if not depart- 
ed, be departing. We regard such responses as a 
duty, and as necessary to keep up the proper 
sympathy between the pulpit and the people. 
They bespeak the earnest, social, and simultane- 
ous character of our worship. They reveal our 
Protestantism. They show that the congrega- 
tion has no faith in that worship in w^hich the 
people's business with their Maker is " done up" 
by priests and proxies. They have been regard- 
ed thus by the Church in all ages, and even the 
prayer-book of the self-styled, the Church, true 



96 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

to tbis fact of history, provides for these respon- 
ses. Let all Methodists, then, say ^^Amen" in 
the great congregation. Give us the people to 
preach to, who convert all corners of their 
church into '^Amen corners," and who both 
Uve^ as well as respond or shout " Amen." As 
for the preacher whom a good hearty '^ Glory to 
God," or other devotional ejaculation, throws 
entirely off his equilibrium, we hope that if 
such be a Methodist preacher, the brethren will 
shout him out of the pulpit, and clear back to 
Jericho, where he may tarry until his beard be 
grown, and he endowed with " power from on 
high." As to the extravagances mentioned, 
then, they have, indeed, been the abuse of a 
good thing among us, which will yield at once 
to intelligent instruction. And even these ex 
travagances have, as yet, done so little harm, 
in proportion to the immense good that has been 
the result of our revival demonstrations, that 
they constitute but a very feeble objection to 
them. Imperfection, more or less, enters into 
all our plans, and their execution. It is not 
given to man to secure to himself, in this world, 
an unmixed good. "K I say I am perfect, 
it shall prove me perverse." God may perfect 
his gracious work in us, and this is spiritual 



PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 97 

perfection, often (but with very doubtful propri- 
ety) called Christian perfection. And the Chris- 
tian in whom God's work is thus perfected is, 
nevertheless, not infallible ; and while it is not 
erroneous to apply the epithet, sinless, to his 
actions, it is erroneous to claim that anything he 
does is personally perfect. And he whose trans- 
cendental notions of Christian character and 
Church order are always finding the preacher 
falling a little below what he ought to be, 
always finding fault with things in the Church 
as not being exactly right, is certainly unfitted 
for the next world, and but very poorly fitted to 
do good in this. The seeker of perfection, in 
matters of human judgment in this world, like 
the evil spirit in the Gospel, when cast out, 
will always be found wandering in desert 
places, seeking rest and finding none. We never 
expect to attend a meeting of any kind, in 
which everything that occurs will please us; 
and, indeed, we go to Church partly on that 
account. For the strong should always be 
present to bear the infirmities of the weak, 
while the weak should be where the strong are, 
that they may acquire strength. What, then, are 
these extravagant demonstrations but another 
manifestation of human imperfection ? And when 



98 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTIOK OF EEVIVALS. 

anything in which human agency is employed 
shall be free from manifestations of imperfec- 
tion, some reason will then exist for claiming 
that revivals should be free from them. 

Another objection to protracted meetings is, 
and it is the last we will mention, that they are 
apt to be followed by apostasy on the part of a 
large majority of the converts. Well, apostasies 
happen in the Church at all times, whether the 
subjects were converted on these special, or other 
occasions. It is rather a difficult question to de- 
termine whether the converts of a protracted 
meeting are more apt to backslide than those of 
other occasions, as by far the greater number of 
conversions occur in protracted meetings, and 
kindred efforts. Apostasies cannot occur where 
there are no converts to backslide. And as to 
the number of backsliders following in the train 
of a protracted meeting, it is often exaggerated. 
Instances where apostasies have been very nu- 
merous, certainly have occurred. But, as an 
offset against this, it may be urged, that, on other 
occasions, persons brought out in religion by 
these protracted efforts, have almost unanimously 
stood firm. 

In the great revivals in which the Calvinistic 
Churches of New-England shared so largely, it 



PKOTRAOTED MEETmGS. 



has been subsequently shown that apostasies 
were most encouragingly rare. The subject of 
their results has been examined with much 
care. 

In 1829, a letter was addressed to the Congre- 
gational ministers of Connecticut, proposing, 
among others, the following inquiries: First. 
What was the whole number of professors of 
religion in your Church at the commencement 
of the year 1820? Second. What number were 
added to your Church by profession during the 
years 1820-4:? Third. Of those who are now 
members of your Church, what proportion may 
be considered as the fruits of a revival, and what 
is their comparative standing for piety, and ac- 
tive benevolent enterprise ? Dr. Hawes, of Hart- 
ford, writing under date March 12th, 1832, says: 
" I am able to state that the answers were in a high 
degree satisfactory." It appeared that a very 
large proportion of all who are now members of 
the Congregational Churches in this state, became 
such in consequence of revivals ; that the rela- 
tive proportion of such, as revivals have been 
multiplying, has been continually increasing; 
that the most active and devoted Christians are 
among those who came into the Church as fruits 
of revivals ; that those Churches in which re- 



100 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

vivals have been most frequent and powerful, 
are the most numerous and flourishing; and 
that in all the Churches thus visited with Divine 
influence, there has been a great increase of 
Christian enterprise and benevolent action. 
Bishop M'llvaine, under date April 6th, 1832. 
writes : " I owe too much of what I hope for as 
a Christian, and what I have been blessed with 
as a minister of the Gospel, not to think most 
highly of the eminent importance of promoting 
this spirit, and consequently guarding it against 
all abuses. Whatever I possess of religion, be- 
gan in a revival. The most precious, steadfast, 
and vigorous fruits of my ministry, have been 
fruits of revivals. I believe that the spirit of 
revivals, in the true sense, was the simple spirit 
of the religion of apostolic times; and will be 
more and more the characteristic of those as 
the day of the Lord draws near." — Sprague on 
JSevivals. 

Again, who are these backsliders ? It is said 
that God is married to them. We hold not that 
conversion implants an undying germ of grace, 
however much we may apostatize. But we do 
hold to the doctrine that there is a very high and 
mysterious relation between the backslider and 
his God. The impressions made in genuine con- 



PEOTEACTED MEETINGS. 101 

version,* may be covered up by subsequent apos- 
tasies. Their possessor may deny their existence, 
but still they are there, with a kind of living 
power, like the handwriting on the wall, that so 
troubled the luxurious monarch. The spiritual 
affections having been once warmed into life, 
the memory thereof lingers, and will obtrude 
itself, in hours of silence and of thoughtfulness, 
upon the conscience, like those memories of 
home that haunted the swine-feeding and starv- 
ing prodigal. Does death threaten ? The back- 
slider will soon give evidence that he under- 
stands the alphabet of Christianity. Men are 
never worse for having been once converted, 
and their restoration to the favor of God, after 
all, is generally more easily effected, from the 
fact that they once tasted that Jesus was pre- 
cious. 

In all genuine revivals, the backsliders are 
among the first to be converted. Away, then, 
with the objection, that we are to be hindered 
from employing those means of grace which so 
often result in the conversion of many, because, 
of this many, some backslide. 

We repeat, then, that protracted meetings con- 
stitute a requirement of the Church, but that we 
should not exalt then^ to the depreciation of the 



102 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

stated means ; that their abuses can and ought to 
be corrected; that they constitute the only spe- 
cific against the Church's relapse into formalism ; 
that those who object to them, make up their ob- 
jections of their abuses ; and that those who do 
not employ them, substitute nothing better, and 
seldom succeed in securing the conversion of sin- 
ners as well as those who do. Protracted meet- 
ings should be the outgrowth, generally, of that 
well-instructed condition of the Church, brought 
about by the faithful labors of the pastor. The 
ordinary means of grace should seem, of them- 
selves, to push themselves out into the extraor- 
dinary. Protracted meetings are a natural 
growth of the Church, and not a graft upon the 
original tree. 



NECESSITY OF AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. 103 



CHAPTEE XI. 

NECESSITY OF AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. 

A RARE BUT INSIDIOUS EVIL EXPOSED — THE FEARFUL PREACHER 

HIS FEARS FOUNDED IN A FALSE PHILOSOPHY A STUNTED 

CHURCH INSTRUCT THE PEOPLE IN THE AGGRESSIVE MOVE- 
MENTS OP THE CHURCH THEY ONLY GROW STRONG BY 

BEARING BURDENS THE "QUARTER OF A DOLLAR " TYPE OF 

METHODISM SPIRITUAL BABIES AT FORTY — PLANS AND PUR- 
POSES SHOULD BE LARGE REASONS WHY THE WEST HAS 

BEEN PARTICULARLY FAVORED WITH REVIVALS — THE PREACHER 

WHO WILL BE BLESSED WITH THEM A WORKING LAITY 

DETERMINES A CHURCH'S PROSPERITY — DANGJEE OF METHOD- 
ISM BEING OUTSTRIPPED BY SISTER SECTS. 

"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that 
there may be meat in mine house, and prove 
me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I 
will not open you the windows of heaven, and 
pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be 
room enough to receive it." " The liberal soul 
shall be made fat : and he that watereth shall 
be watered also himself." " The diligent hand 
maketh rich." " But this I say. He which sow- 
eth sparingly, shall reap also sparingly ; and he 
which soweth bountifully, shall reap also bounti- 
fully. Every man p,ccording as he hath pur- 



104: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

posed in his heart, so let him give ; not grudg- 
ingly, or of necessity ; for God loveth a cheerful 
giver. And God is able to make all grace 
abound toward you." 

The pertinence of the above passages of 
Scripture to our present purpose will appear 
presently. We wish to expose a great error which, 
though not everywhere prevalent, yet is it too 
prevalent if found in one case in fifty. It is an 
insidious error, which may exist in cases suffi- 
ciently extreme to excite attention but rarely; 
and yet, like unseen miasma, this error may 
work a wider mischief than we suppose. What 
we mean is this : Naturally enough, and relig- 
iously enough, one of the first objects of concern 
with a Methodist preacher is, how he may best 
secure the raising of his " claim," which, from 
its smallness, is every cent needed by himself 
or family, to whom he first and foremost owes 
duty. On his arrival, therefore, upon his circuit 
or station he reconnoiters at once the ability of 
his people to support him, and enters into con- 
siderations as to their probable liberality. The 
conclusion is, that if his people are not pressed 
hard for other pecuniary objects, they are fully 
able to, and most certainly will, '^meet his 
claim." True, a parsonage should be built, or 



NECESSITY OP AGaRESSIYE ENTERPRISE. 105 

the old one repaired ; the Church should be 
renovated, or a new one built ; the library of 
the Sabbath school should be enlarged and re- 
plenished ; a box of books should be sent for, 
and the people urged to buy; every family 
should be visited, and urged to take some one or 
two of our periodicals ; and then there is the 
presiding elder's claim ; and besides incidental 
expenses, applications for collections for some 
itinerant object of benevolence, there are the 
stated collections : collections for missions, the 
Bible cause, Sunday-School Union, Tract cause. 
Fifth Collection, collection for expenses of dele- 
gates, etc. Now our fearful brother runs over 
this long list, and with a most lugubrious sigh 
and look resolves honestly, out of self-protection, 
to give just as many of them the ''go-by" as he 
can. His philosophy is, that the less frequently 
people are called upon to give, and the less they 
are required to give, the easier will it be to raise 
that little. A more erroneous sentiment could 
scarcely be entertained. It is untrue to the laws 
of our mental and moral nature ; contradicted 
by every day's experience, and exposed and con- 
demned by the Scriptures. The sentiment, also, 
is incalculably deleterious in its effects upon the 
preacher. It generates tearfulness and selfish- 



106 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF KEVIVALS. 

ness. The former is weakness, and the latter is 
apt to manifest itself in croaking and censori- 
onsness. For the preacher who trembles at this 
large competition, is almost sure to find his own 
pay coming in tardily, grudgingly, and stinted- 
ly. Under such a pastor the Church feels that 
its liberality has put on a Chinese shoe. It 
moves slowly and sluggishly, for the want of the 
inspiration of an example of an aggressive enter- 
prise in its pastor. If periodicals are subscribed 
for, the brethren make application to their pas- 
tor, and not their pastor to them. The Disci- 
plinary collections are taken up, unaccompanied 
by any very explicit explanation, or urgent so- 
licitation from the pulpit. If the work of 
church repairing or church building goes on, it 
originates with the laity, by seeming suJfferance 
of the pastor ; or, what is most commonly the 
case, is only talked of by the brethren during the 
term of service of such a preacher. Who does 
not know that in all these matters the pastor 
must not say, " Go on," but " Come on f Rarely 
is it that a revival breaks out under such a cleri- 
cal administration, and for the reasons intimated 
in the above scriptures. Like Mount Ebal, such 
a charge is wont to be mantled with barren- 
ness. 



NECESSITY OF AOGEESSIVE ENTERPRISE. 107 

Who are the ministers most liberally supported 
among ns ? Are they the disciples of this school 
of the philosophy of benevolence ? The results 
of even a casual observation will always furnish 
but one answer to these questions. Twenty- 
three years' scrutiny in this direction, has fixed 
this conviction in our mind, that the preacher 
who is most apprehensive about his support, has 
the greatest reason to be; and that the man 
who neglects to draw out the liberality of the 
Church for other objects besides that of himself, 
will not fare half so well as the brother who 
pursues a widely dififerent course. Indeed, 
there is no department of truth so admirably cal- 
culated to stimulate a Church to look well after 
its pastor, and build up its home interests, as a 
thorough indoctrination into our various systems 
of benevolent and aggressive enterprise. A 
people ignorant of our current literature, desti- 
tute of our periodicals, with very little of the 
missionary spirit, is expected to take liberal 
views in supporting the preacher who is sent to 
them ! How hugely absurd ! It would be quite 
easy now to point to districts in our Zion, where 
the fathers and the mothers — good, pious souls — 
seem not to have the slightest idea that it is any- 
thing less than heresy to teach that " quarter- 



108 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

age" does not mean a quarter of a dollar, paid 
once in three months ; and that by a free Gos- 
pel is meant that God would convert the world 
without the money of the Church ; the gold and 
silver belonging to the members being no longer 
his ; that Christians were irroprietors of their 
possessions, and not stewards. Thirty-five or 
forty years ago, they paid the preacher this by 
a hard efi'ort, and divided witli him their pot of 
hominy, and it was all that was required. Since 
that time, their broad alluvial acres have 
become worth thousands upon thousands, and 
their barns burst out with the pressure of their 
contents. They have, indeed, kept their faith, 
amid this elevation from poverty to prosperity. 
But, if they hare grown in grace, they have not 
grown in knowledge. Their conservatism is 
that of ignorance and bigotry. We do not say 
that they are not Christians, but we do say that 
they are just such Christians as the erroneous 
pastoral policy we are exposing is well calcu- 
lated to produce. With all their loud shoutings 
at camp-meetings, they are dwarfs in the Church 
of God, and will be monsters of minuteness 
among the angels of heaven. They spent their 
childhood where tlie schoolmaster was not 
abroad, and commenced their Christian career 



NECESSITY OF AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. 109 

without reading. They have continued it with- 
out reading. The Church of Vv'-hich they are 
members, is to them as much of a terra incog- 
nita^ as is the empire of Eussia to one of its 
serfs. Their souls never felt the expansive 
sympathy of our great organized functions, for 
the purpose of " spreading Scriptural holiness 
over these lands." They might, did they but 
know it, (and the act would be a mighty blessing 
to them,) give their thousands and tens of thou- 
sands for the endowment of colleges, replenishing 
of our exhausted missionary treasury, or the 
spread of religious literature. But, to solicit of 
such brethren what it is no more than simple 
duty for them to do, actually discourages, if it 
does not disgust and alienate them. It is like 
teaching dogmatically the profoundest truths 
of our theology to an infant class in Sabbath 
school. Now, such a crop of Christians as 
these, are sustained and nursed up for heaven 
by the Church. Yes, nursed ; for they will be 
children all their lives, spiritual babies of forty 
or fifty years of age. They are sustained by the 
Church ; they do not sustain it. We rejoice to 
think they may be '' scarcely''^ saved, but we do 
not believe in sowing for such a crop. In the 
former period of our history they formed a good 



110 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

army of occupation. In making additions to 
our conquered territory, we find them of little 
avail. The time has come in onr own history 
when efforts for the world's conversion must be 
made on a larger scale. Work of a masculine, 
massive, colossal character, must distinguish our 
ministry and people. Our piety must be back- 
boned with principle, and rendered prophet- 
visioned, by standing just where the throne 
flashes its ceaseless light earthward. Our 
people must be a reading people, or they will 
be a weak people; they must be a working 
people, or they will become spiritually dyspep- 
tic for the want of exercise ; and our piety will 
be made up of spasms, strongly tinctured with 
animal fervors, and based upon half principles. 
There is a sense in which a Church may always 
be said to be in a revival state, if all its mem- 
bers but be hard at work to accomplish some 
great object of Church aggression. It may be 
the building of a church edifice, or the estab- 
lishing of a seminary. One reason, as it seems 
to us, why the West, both this winter and last, 
has been distinguished by such a large number 
of revivals, is, that our people are all at work, 
building churches and parsonages, establishing 
schools, new church organs, etc. And it will 



NECESSITY OF AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. Ill 

generally be found that that preacher who has 
not secularized himself by inordinate land specu- 
lations, the purchase of railroad stock, etc., and 
who is not fearful and unbelieving on the sub- 
ject of his own support, and who has his hands 
the deepest in this good work — the greatest 
number of irons in the fire — will be found the 
most certainly to be blessed with a revival, and the 
most certainly to get a competent support. 

We have spoken of the activities of Methodism 
in the Northwest as it finds itself without a 
shelter, and must needs meet the want. This 
suggests to us a great fact of modern date in the 
history of sister denominations, going alike to 
illustrate the fact that a working laity will 
always graduate a ChurcNs prosjoerity. With 
Methodists the principle was early incorporated 
in the order of their worship, that the Church 
member should not only be privileged, but that 
it is made his duty to reveal the state of his 
faith and Christian experience before his breth- 
ren from time to time, and at the same time 
his benevolence in the support of the institutions 
of the Church should be taxed. This provision 
is found in the class-meeting, where those who 
love the Lord speak often one to another, and 
make weekly contributions for the support of the 



112 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

ministry and relief of the poor. Here, we re- 
peat, was an early provision for the continuous 
working of the laity, and just as long as it could 
be carried into effect, Methodism was little else 
than another name for a continuous revival. 
But no adequate provision, we apprehend, has 
been made for the working of the laity in other 
evangelical Churches. In the course of events, 
however, work, noble work, has been thrust upon 
them. In the Missionary, Tract, Sabbath-School, 
and other glorious reforms and enterprises, all of 
which are of modern date, the laity find abund- 
ant food for thought, motive for effort, and 
channels for benevolence. The effect upon 
sister Churches has been most invigorating. 
The Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Congre- 
gational branches of the Church were never 
more flourishing in this country than now. 
Their aggressive power, especially in Western 
cities and towns, is such as should not only pro- 
voke Methodists to emulation, but excite in them 
the greatest caution, lest, by apathy, they permit 
others to enter into their labors, to supplant 
them in their position. Are they not doing 
this in not a few localities ? 



NURSmG THE YOUNG CONVERT. 113 



CHAPTER XII. 

NURSING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 

A DISPKOPOKTION BETWEEN CONVERSIONS RECORDED AND ULTIMATE 
RESULTS — INCREASE IN THE MEMBERSHIP IN THE YEARS 18o4-5 
NOT FLATTERING — MORE IMPORTANT TO TAKE CARE OP WHAT 
WE HAVE, THAN TO SECURE MORE AT THE NEGLECT OF THAT — 
THE YOUNG CONVERT MUST BE INSTRUCTED KIND OF IN- 
STRUCTION NEEDED THE HELP PROVIDED FOR THE PASTOR — 

THE CLASS-LEADER — OUR CHURCH LITERATURE NECESSITY OF 

CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTION THE EXAMPLE OF THE ANCIENT 

CHURCH OUR INCREASED FACILITIES FOR NURSING THE YOUNG 

CONVERT LOSS TO THE ANCIENT CHURCH FOR THE WANT OF 

THE PRESS THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE POPE NECESSITY OP 

SPREADING OUR BOOKS THE YOUNG CONVERT TO BE AT ONCE 

SUPPLIED IMPORTANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS WEEKLY RELATION 

OF RELIGIOUS READING TO REVELATION — THE BIBLE ALWAYS TO 
PRECEDE, BUT NEVER SUPERSEDE THE CONSECRATED TONGUE 
AND PEN. 

" Till I come, give attendance to reading." The 
theme of the present chapter is the relation of 
the young convert to our religious literature. 
This, in these days, must be introduced as an 
auxiliary to pastoral, verbal, and catechetical 
training. It must constitute the pabulum of the 
babe in Christ. We the more readily offer some 
thoughts upon this theme, in view of some im- 
portant facts in our late historv. During the years 

8 



114 HELPS TO THE FKO:MOTrON OF REVIVALS. 

1854-5, the columns of our Advocates were res- 
onant with revival snouts. We rejoiced to be 
privileged to read of the conversion of many hun- 
dreds, and we felt, until the General Minutes came 
out, that the Methodist Episcopal Church, nu- 
merically, had taken a hopeful stride onward. 
The showing of the General Minutes disappointed 
us, and we read of a decrease, in fourteen confer- 
ences, of three thousand seven hundred and 
forty. To be sure, emigration mainly accounted 
for this fact. But still, the aggregate increase, 
sixteen thousand and seventy -three (two and one 
third per cent.) disappointed us. Among these 
sixteen thousand increase, were to be counted 
the conversion of several thousand in the Sabbath 
school, and also the addition of several thousand 
by letter, from England, Ireland, and Canada, 
leaving quite too small a showing as the result 
of revival effort. We numbered Israel, at the 
close of last year, with no fearful or croaking 
spirit, and yet we felt that, so far as we had 
sent out our influence in favor of revivals, we 
had proved, emphatically, an unprofitable serv- 
ant. And while we first examined ourselves 
to see what was wrong at home, as we think 
every minister should do, in pondering a great 
question of Church progress and responsibility, 



NURSING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 115 

we felt that something was wrong, and that the 
wrong was, probably, wide-spread. Had there 
not been a want of proper nursing extended to 
the young convert ? And in what did this de- 
fect consist? Every one, perhaps, will agree 
with us, that the principal work of the pastor, 
with the young convert, commences after his 
conversion and admission to the Church. So 
important has our Church ever regarded instruc- 
tion of this kind, that she has provided the pas- 
tor a number of subordinate helps in the class- 
leaders. That the pastor can be much with the 
convert in person, and instruct him ; find out his 
difficulties, strengthen him against temptation, 
and encourage him to renewed effi^rt, every one 
knows to be generally impracticable. What, 
then, besides the stated instruction of the pulpit, 
and the application of these lessons by the faith- 
ful leader in the class-room, comes in, most 
efficiently, to supply this lack of service ? We 
unhesitatingly answer, our books and period- 
icals. 

In far the larger number of cases, religious 
reading is essential to make up the complement 
of that happy combination of moral and religious 
influences that should be ever kept, like a life- 
infusing atmosphere, about the young convert. 



116 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

We fear this arm of our strength has not been 
duly appreciated. We fear that the practice of 
the primitive Church has not been pleaded in 
example, here, as it ought to have been. He has 
read Church history to very little purpose, who 
fails to remember, that, in the early periods of 
the Church, when the wondrous press, which 
multiplies its tongues at will, and speaks to many 
millions in the same minute, was unknown, that 
the catechising of the young convert, the initia- 
ting of him into the doctrine of the Gospel, and 
order of the Church, occupied far the larger por- 
tion of the pastor's time. Hence it was that the 
young converts, for many centuries, were called 
catechumens, or, pupils of the Gospel. Would 
that our young converts were induced to become 
students of the Gospel at once! Would that 
more prompt efforts were made to awaken 
thought, and thus wed the young convert to the 
Church by adding this tie to the fervors of a first 
love ! What the ancient pastors were wont to 
do, verbally, for the want of it, modern pastors 
may now do by the printed page. Look over 
our extended catalogue of book, tract, and Sab- 
bath-school publications ; recommend, also, with 
no less zeal, some one of our weekly sheets, for 
in all will be found, for every man, exhaustless 



NUESINa THE YOUNG CONYERT. 117 

stores of "meat in due season." With the 
wholesome and strong-textured government of 
the primitive Church, with the requirements 
which it laid upon the man mental, as well as 
the man spiritual, we have often thought, that 
the primitive fathers would have kept the gates 
of hell from prevailing against the Church, nine 
tenths more than they succeeded in doing, had 
they but been favored with the facilities of the 
modern press. Their programme was right, but 
they failed for the want of means to carry it out. 
They were without the means of unitizing 
thought, and this was weakness ; they were 
without the means of perpetuating thought, 
and this was poverty, always rendering them 
new beginners. They were without the means 
of spreading thought, commensurate with the 
outside pressure from the all-surrounding dark- 
ness. Ignorance begat superstition, and su- 
perstition begat the pope. Like the old flood 
of Noah, the consequences that followed have 
left their traces of moral ruin everywhere upon 
the face of the earth. After miracles ceased, 
and inspiration returned to its home in heaven, 
the pulpit seemed without ability to hold its 
place of purity and power among mankind. 
This, brethren, is the age of the press, and the 



118 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

work of the Church is to consecrate that press. 
The Church has provided for your young con- 
verts the unobtrusive, and yet fascinating, the 
silent, but yet eloquent, catechist. It visits him 
with but trifling expense ; it asks no place in his 
bed nor at his board ; it lays no tax upon his 
hospitalities, and yet, when its mouth is opened, 
it teaches him, without the possibility of being 
misunderstood, those lessons of caution and love, 
of ethics and of doctrine, of discipline and of 
duty, without a knowledge of which, early im- 
parted, many will be sick and weakly among 
us, others draw back, and some to perdition. 
Dear brethren, place our books in the hands of 
the young convert, with the injunction of Paul 
to Timothy, "Give thyself to reading till I come." 
Especially in the periodical form should our 
Church literature be commended, and urged 
upon our young converts. In this age of news- 
papers, every interest has its organ. The ped- 
dler of some newly-invented peat-bog pill must 
needs issue a newspaper, and organize, by its 
power, his circle of friends, to make Brandreth 
the pill-monger, Brandreth the millionaire. 
This use, or misuse of the press has become so 
customary, that it amounts to a social law, to an 
order of things. "Shall the children of this 



NURSINa THE YOUNG CONVERT. 119 

world be wiser than tlie children of light?" 
Can we expect the young convert to feel a lively 
interest in that numerous and far-extended 
brotherhood, to which he is an additional broth- 
er, if he be ignorant of her history and her 
achievements? The Church must be known to 
be loved, and the heart of Methodism is made to 
beat weekly against the heart of the young con- 
vert by means of the religious sheet. Among 
the twenty-five hundred young converts, whose 
translation from darkness to light, and admission 
into the bosom of our Zion, how many new sub- 
scribers ought we to expect for our papers ? We 
were told the other day, by a German presiding 
elder, that one of the matter-of-course things 
always attended to whenever they receive a new 
member into the Church, is then and there ^' to 
urge him to take the ' Apologist^ " If not in 
form, in fact we consider the example a noble 
one, and full worthy of imitation by our brethren, 
who are now enjoying such blessed revival 
visitations. Who doubts but there is a con- 
servative power, ay, a sanctifying power, in such 
a course, that will tell favorably upon our sta- 
tistics of increase. It is one thing to be instru- 
mental in the sinner's conversion, and record it 
in our revival notices, to the glory of God, and 



120 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

another thing, and no less a work, to keep the 
sinner converted, and develop his suscepti- 
bilities of Christian character " into the fullness 
of the stature of a man in Christ Jesus." 

But some may be ready to accuse us of over- 
rating the importance of merely uninspired re- 
ligious reading — of exalting the servant above 
his Lord — the book above the Bible. By no 
means. We are only introducing the true mis- 
sion of the herald, the John the Baptist, to 
prepare the way. We grossly err in supposing 
that even the Bible will be read, by even young 
converts, in preference to some religious litera- 
ture in another form. To suppose this is to err 
as greatly as to suppose that the unconverted 
will read the Bible sooner than hear preach- 
ing. And as experience demonstrates the 
truth in the latter case, so, very limited ob- 
servation will demonstrate it in the former. 
But why has preaching been instituted ? Why, 
for the purpose of adapting the truth to man's 
capabilities certainly, and so simplifying it, and 
mixing it with the facts and experiences of the 
present, that it more readily coalesces with the 
thoughts of the hearers, and proves the " power 
of God unto salvation." Precisely so with the 
religious book. It is preaching to the eye, 



NUESING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 121 

while the living voice preaches to the ear. But 
•how can we exalt uninspired religious reading 
above the Bible, when, as we now assume, if it 
be the kind of religious reading needed, it per- 
fectly accords with the Bible ? It would not be 
religious reading if it did not defer to the Bible 
as the rule, and only rule of our faith and prac- 
tice. The moon would cease to be the moon 
did she cease to reflect, though attempering 
them in the process, the rays of the sun. But 
what is the true relation of the consecrat- 
ed page to holy writ? An illustration may 
help us to a clearer and more extended concep- 
tion. The Bible is a volume full of great first 
truths in morals and doctrines, history and duty. 
But these truths but rarely lie within its sacred 
inclosures under any system of classification, 
while the concrete of these trutlis — concrete is 
the embodiment of the abstract, as seen in the 
acts of men — is illustrated by example in a wide- 
ly different manner. Truth, in the Bible, lies 
like the precious ore in the bosom of the mount- 
ain. It is there in inexhaustible stores. But, 
comparatively speaking, only now and then is 
this ore to be found quarried, and smelted, and 
ready for use. Well, now, what relation does 
the preacher or the ]mous pen sustain to this 



122 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF BEYIVALS. 

massive mine ? It is to quarry, and smelt, and 
prepare its precious boon for the readier recep- 
tion of others. But let there be no monopoly of 
mining. That the priests only can understand 
and interpret the Bible, is one of the giant lies 
of papacy. Let every man quarry and smelt 
for himself. Let not the young convert neglect 
the Bible for a moment, because, in his first in- 
troduction to it, he may find many things " hard 
to be understood." He will also find many 
things easy to be understood, and the products 
of the pens of the wise and the good will help 
him to wade, with the intrepidity of the angel- 
led prophet, far into the depths of the river of 
life. " And he brought me through the waters ; 
the waters were to the ankles : again he measur- 
ed a thousand, and brought me through the 
watei^s; the waters were to the knees. Again 
he measured a thousand, and brought me 
through ; the waters were to the loins. After- 
ward he measured a thousand, and it was a 
river that I could not pass over ; for the waters 
were risen, waters to swim in, a river that 
could not be passed over." What the angel 
visitant, with his measuring line, was to the 
prophet Ezekiel, the living teacher and the print- 
ed teacher are to the sinner and to the young 



NURSINa THE YOUNa CONVERT. 123 

convert. The Bible, in the work of reform, 
conversion, and development, was never design- 
ed to supersede the anointed, holy tongue, and 
the consecrated pen. Brethren, do we duly 
appreciate the evidently heaven-ordained mis- 
sion of the latter no less than the former ? 



124 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 



CHAPTER Xm. 

THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 

WHAT CHRISTIAN KIXDNESS IS NOT — CHEISTIAN KINDNESS DEFINED 

ERRONEOUS VIEWS CORRECTED — THE ESTHETIC ELEMENT OF 

KINDNESS THE POWER OF KINDNESS ILLUSTRATED RELATION 

OF KINDNESS TO GOOD MANNERS KINDNESS AS A REVIVAL EL- 
EMENT CONSTITUTES A WANT OF THE CHURCH KINDNESS A 

TEST OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 

"If it be possible^ as much as lieth in you, 
live peaceably with all men." It is a Scriptural 
principle, then, that it is not always possible to 
live peaceably with all men. Differences of 
opinion, inducing pungent resistance in argu- 
ment, occurred even among inspired apostles. 
Paul "withstood Peter to his face, because he 
was to be blamed." Perfect non-resistance on 
all occasions when right is at the risk, or char- 
acter hazarded, is but mawkish piety, the strain- 
ing of a virtue beyond its natural bounds, until 
it ceases to be a virtue. In such pei-sons, all 
positiveness, all aggressiveness of character is 
sacrificed. Self-defense is by no means to be 
confounded with "rendering evil for evil." The 
cause of innocence and truth may require such 



THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 125 

defense, even if their assaulter should be made 
the sufferer by it. By kindness, then, we do 
not mean that insipid, affected, and water-gruel 
sentimentality that fears the ill-will of the sin- 
ner more than it desires and burns to rebuke 
the sin ; and apologizes with the waft of a white 
handkerchief, cologned for the occasion, for por- 
traying in Scripture language that outer dark- 
ness and hell of fire and brimstone which are the 
terminus of the sinner's course. Nor do we 
mean that wishy-washy piety that talks much 
of persecution, of suffering in silence, and claims 
that it is its duty to do no more than throw up 
its hands in prayer for its enemies, whatever 
dastard tattler, insidious whisperer, or open ca- 
lumniator may undertake to inflict, in the indulg- 
ence of a morbid appetite, upon its reputation. 
Nor does it care to busy itself to chase down 
every latest edition of a lie. Christian kindness 
is a masculine virtue. It is strong to bear the 
infirmities of the weak, but equally prompt to 
defend the right, when assailed in its own per- 
son or otherwise. Its controlling power is love, 
and not fear. And it is always more ready to 
resent injury done to innocence, or to repel a 
thrust at truth, than to count the cost — weigh 
the consequences. And yet it is not rash. It 



126 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

always makes haste slowly. It is always in 
haste, but never in a hurry. " It doth not be- 
have itself unseemly." There is a morally es- 
thetic beauty about it, to which we give the 
name of courtesy. This virtue leavens the ad- 
ministration of its rebukes, and makes them ad- 
mired, even where they are repulsed ; but not 
wholly repulsed. An appreciation of the fitting 
and a love of the beautiful are primary senti- 
ments in the mind. And the man who differs 
with me in kindness, and points to the Delilah 
of my ruin, has begotten a species of conviction, 
even in spite of my most obstinate opposition. 
There are those among Christians, and even 
Christian ministers, who contend that they can 
do nothing with some, without making them 
mad. Such persons are, certainly, rare excep- 
tions to the power of kindness, and we think 
kindness itself demands they should never be 
mentioned. This is a dangerous doctrine, and 
very full of mischief. 

True kindness must be inbred. It is the fruit 
of grace, under the husbandry of self-discipline. 
Some temperaments are vastly better adapted 
to the development and exercise of this virtue 
than others. But no temperament is so per- 
verse, no constitutional peculiarities too obsti- 



THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 127 

nate to be overcome. And we should plead 
their existence in Christian character, as an 
apology for rashness, rudeness, acerbity of spirit, 
harshness of speech, and carelessly-chosen words, 
with great hesitancy. If the grace of God will 
not induce us to treat each other kindly, either 
it has failed in its efficacy, or we have mistaken 
something else for its efficacy. The world ex- 
pects Christians to be kind one to another, and 
will detect a departure in speech, spirit, or act, 
with preeminent readiness and precision. "Be 
kindly afiectioned one to another, in honor pre- 
ferring one another." No chord of the human 
heart has lost less its sensitiveness, by man's 
lapse from Eden purity, than that which awak- 
ens to the touch of kindness. Her gentlest 
breath inspires it with song, while an opposite 
look or gesture becomes electrical, and equally 
causes it to vibrate, but with pain, pity, or with 
hate. There is a vast, diffusive, conservative, 
and controlling power in kindness. The every- 
day social illustrations of this are so familiar, as 
to become self-suggestive. But does an emer- 
gency arise ? Are the elements of strife abroad, 
and waking the social waters into fury and 
foam, like the winds of the great ocean? Con- 
ceive we of such a state of things in a deliberative 



128 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

body, a church meeting, etc. ? Watch yonder 
the man who has an '^ excellent spirit within 
him," the man who has studied kindness by 
keeping himself in the love of God, and who 
has attired himself in her beautiful robes, by 
studying the laws of courtesy, whose acts are 
replete with gentleness, as the zephyi^s, and little 
eddying winds, prophets of the coming storm, 
^but whose firmness without obstinacy, and 
whose independence without egotism, are as 
strong as that storm ; show us that man, and it 
may scarcely be deemed desecration to compare 
his control in that body, other things being 
equal, to the "Peace, be still," once uttered over 
tempestuous Galilee. The kind man, especially 
the kind Christian, carries with him — be his 
talent indeed humble — an atmosphere of force 
and sweet impressiveness wherever he goes. 
Kindness is not "good manners," technically 
speaking. He may be wholly ignorant of the 
canons of Chesterfield, and the programme of 
Count d'Orsay. Uninitiated into the school of 
fashionable etiquette, he may have read or 
heard nothing, systematically, upon that sub- 
ject, more than what is found in the thirteenth 
chapter of first Corinthians. But like the flower 
of the wilderness^ kindness sheds as sweet an 



THE POWER OP KINDNESS. 129 

odor upon a cabin hearth, with its rude attire, 
scanty vocabulary, and frugal fare, as the rose 
that blooms upon the walls of mural palaces. 
Kindness extemporizes an etiquette for itself, 
and becomes a " stroke of nature that makes all 
men kin." Not that it seeks an individualism of 
manner, or glories in personal eccentricities, part- 
ly natural and partly affected. Nor does it dis- 
claim many of what are called the laws of good 
manners. It becomes no oddity in the social cir- 
cle, to the level of which it may have been raised 
by taste and talent. Contrariwise, the most ap- 
proved manners of the refined gentleman soon 
become, by study and acquisition, the most ap- 
proved etiquette of the Christian, but especially 
of the Christian minister. And in this the kind- 
hearted Christian always has the advantage, for 
if Christian kindness be not the body of refined 
manners, it is much more, it is the soul of that 
body. A high state of Christian civilization, 
without such refinement of manner as sphere in 
life, capacity, and education would call for, all 
must acknowledge to be a solecism. Kindness, 
then, is the art of pleasing, practiced by a heart 
that has become graciously kind and charitable 
under the influence of grace and the illumina- 
tions of the Bible. But to please a man is to 

9 



130 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

win his confidence. It imperceptibly sways 
him in our favor, and in favor of the opinions 
we advance. "Let every one of us please his 
brother, for his good to edification." 

When we commenced to develop, as we have 
done above, this essential element of power in 
the winning of souls, we had designed to trace in 
our pulpit, and in our press and social life, what 
we deem departures from the law of kindness. 
Our remarks have become so extended as to for- 
bid this in the present chapter, and never did we 
more readily permit an application to take care 
of itself. We think the principles we have 
enumerated will readily suggest to our readers 
many, at least, of those practical lessons of 
which they are so replete. Will they especially 
consider the power of kindness in its application 
to the promotion of revivals, and the husbandry 
of their blessed fruits? It is an element of 
power that should be confined to no department 
of the Church. It should extend from the high- 
est functionary to the last converted infant in 
the Sabbath school, whose limping lisps and 
dewy eye "perfect the praise of Jesus." As 
far as any single grace, or combination of 
graces, for such it is, involve the interests of our 
Church in practice, the want of being kindly 



THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 131 

aflfectioned one toward another may be pro- 
nounced a great Want of ouk Zion. Thank 
God, we speak not despairingly. The present 
blessed, and almost universal revival visitation, 
has greatly increased the prevalence of brotherly 
love. It is not our province nor our privilege 
to mingle much with the " little flock" who are 
to inherit the " kingdom ;" but it is to see many 
of our embassadors for Christ, (and hear from 
lumdreds more,) who shaking us with unwonted 
warmness by the hand, refer to the revival col- 
umns of our Advocates, with glowing emphasis, 
as the common weekly band-meeting of the 
whole Church, who sympathize in sentiment, 
and seem especially urged to the practice of the 
apostle's injunction: "Finally, be ye all of one 
mind, having compassion one of another ; love 
as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not ren- 
dering evil for evil, or railing for railing; but 
contrariwise, blessing; knowing that ye are 
thereunto called, that ye should inherit a bless- 
ing. For he that will love his life and see 
good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, 
and his lips that they speak no guile." 

"See how these Christians love," has often 
been an argument before which intidelity has 
withered and vanished, like the fiibled upas 



132 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OP REVIVALS. 

upon the brink of an active volcano. Dear 
brethren, let ns pause, ponder, and pray over the 
emphasis which we are to place upon this 
" how^'^ with reference to the state of our own 
cherished Methodism. 



INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 133 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS CON- 
SIDERED. 

LAW OF KINDNESS VIOLATED IN SPIRIT — THE PULPIT SCOLD — 
THE ACID REVIVALIST — RESULTS OF SUCH REVIVALS THE RE- 
LATION OF THE TONES OF THE VOICE TO KINDNESS — ANECDOTE 
OF WHITEFIELD — VOICE OF THE PREACHER IN THE PULPIT — 

ANECDOTE OF THE LITTLE GIRL IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT 

TOO LITTLE REALIZED WORDS UNFITLY SPOKEN PERSONAL- 
ITIES IN DEBATE AN APOLOGY FOR THEIR PREVALENCE THE 

OLD WRITERS — THE YOUNG WRITERS — REFORM NEEDED. 

We spoke in the last chapter of the power of 
kindness as a potent element in the work of win- 
ning souls, keeping them wedded to our Iroly 
altars, and nurturing them for the skies. We 
promised, by way of illustration and warning, to 
point out what we regarded as some of the de- 
partures from the law of kindness. 

The law of kindness may be violated in spirit. 
By the spirit of a man we now mean those social, 
intellectual, and moral impressions, which, either 
as a writer, preacher, or private companion, he 
makes upon us, and which are more or less 
agreeable to us, and which we so readily feel to 



134: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

be in accordance with candor, truth, goodness, 
and charity, or their opposites. A right act 
may be done in a wrong spirit. The spirit in 
which men say and do things is, in fact, one of 
the great powers of life in the promotion of 
good or ill. A good act done in a bad spirit, 
might often better not have been done. A ser- 
mon preached in the spirit of the scold, had, we 
believe, generally, better have remained un- 
preached. There are those who pique them- 
selves on what they call " whipping the Church 
into the harness," and all this under the shield 
of that great truth in the work of revivals, that 
the Church must first be set right. Nor is it to 
be denied that some successful revivalists are 
greatly given to a censorious, denun dating, dog- 
matical, harsh, and acid mode of presenting the 
truth. We have often heard them, in their pre- 
liminary lectures, picking out w^hat they called 
the sins of Church members, as if they had 
brought the Church to judgment, ex cathedra^ 
and then, in a seemingly commingled spirit of 
harshness, egotism, and self-satisfaction, they de 
cided upon each one's fate. We have said that 
such preaching is not always wanting in marked 
success. And here let it be borne in mind, that 
we have long settled it as a fact in the economy 



mFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 135 

of God's grace, that sermons often quite as de- 
ficient in the right spirit, as a sermon well could 
be in intellectual merit, is often made the means 
of great good. We are not speaking, then, of a 
style of preaching that does 7io good, but of one 
which always fails seriously of doing the greatest 
good. A revival, originated and matured under 
the type of pulpit labor which we have here so 
imperfectly described, is very apt to be wanting 
in deepness of earth. In all revivals, the spirit 
of the preacher is preeminently catching, and if 
he be given to censoriousness, denunciation, and 
a right-angled — sometimes acute — spirit, this 
same spirit will take possession of the Church 
and the young converts. And when the rains 
come, and the winds blow upon such a moral 
structure, if it do not always all fall, we have 
always noticed a great falling away. Every 
zealous member and young convert must needs 
be as urgent, extreme, and peremptory in his de- 
mands upon a brother, or the sinner he would 
reform, as was his late spiritual model. But, in 
such cases, resistance follows, feelings are hurt, 
heart-burnings occur, and the further consequen- 
ces need not be detailed. We maintain, that in 
this case there is a sad departure in spirit from 
that law of kindness described in our last chapter. 



136 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

The law of kindness may be violated in the 
tones of the voice. This, perhaps, is often acci- 
dental. In the former case, the importance of 
the subject may have been never considered. 
Bad practices may have become chronic, by 
time and the power of habit. Not a few, how- 
ever, are to be found who seem to delight in a 
gruff, surly, and austere-toned address. There is 
no power in nature more mysterious, none that 
operates with greater certainty, than that of the 
innumerable intonations of which the human 
voice is capable. In a tone, grief becomes irre- 
sistibly eloquent, hate suggests the deadly 
poison of the dreaded basilisk, love unmans, and 
beauty transports. It is not the words of the 
mother, for many long months, that make her 
babe feel that the heart of love is its cradle, and 
the lessons of discipline its lot. " Not so much 
what my mother said to me, as the way she 
said it," was once remarked to the writer by a 
despairing young man, who had sadly strayed 
from the precepts of the parental roof. " O," 
said he, as the great tears coursed down his 
cheeks, " the way my mother said that last thing 
to me! The tones of her voice murmur this 
moment in my ear !" Is there, then, no moral 
power in the tone of a word ? As well deny to 



INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 137 

music its charms, to the rose its odor, to the sky 
its beauty. Without insisting upon the study of 
any of those systems of art, calculated to put the 
human voice right, here we will say, that this 
is a subject well worthy of consideration — a sub- 
ject demanding attention, even by private 
Christians, where none is often thought neces- 
sary ; while, as it respects the Christian minister 
or teacher, it is one that should be studied as of 
no secondary importance. Says Whitefield, " I 
carefully sought out those acceptable tones that 
won like a spell upon the heart, even when the 
words were unremembered." So wonderfully 
modulated was his voice, that Garrick said, ''he 
could make men either laugh or cry, by pro- 
nouncing the word Mesopotamia." 

" His words, they had so sweet a flow, 
And spoke the truth so richly well, 

They fell like heaven's serenest snow, 
And all was brightness where they fell." 

The power which appropriate intonations 
have upon our own moral emotions, and the in- 
fluence, again, which these moral emotions have 
to produce thought, should suggest a valuable 
lesson to every Christian minister. The man 
who is always talking gruffly, and in harsh tones, 
may think strongly, but he will think roughly. 



138 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

Like the picture of the artist, which becomes 
more accm^ate and mellowed by age, so the 
sound of one's own voice is an imperceptible 
educator of his taste. Much of the harshness of 
tone of which we are now speaking, and whicli 
vacillates between the scold and hoarseness, un- 
doubtedly arises from that common fault of the 
pulpit of pitching the voice at once on one key, 
and keeping it there, only with increased or 
diminished percussion, through an entire dis- 
course. The preacher who corrects this fault 
by the study of elocution, does vastly more than 
to achieve an important intellectual victory. 
He increases mightily his power of persuasive- 
ness. He studies the elocution of moral emo- 
tions. He learns to speak Tcindly in public. 
There might have been the absence of all un- 
kindness before. But now there is the presence 
of that potent charm. We appeal to the ex- 
perience of brethren. How often have we re- 
gretted, even while preaching, that our voice 
was so little in harmony with what we really 
felt and desired to teach. " Ma," said the little 
girl to her mother, on returning from church, 
" I like our preacher when he comes to see us, 
but I don't like to hear him preach." On being 
asked why, the response was, "His preaching 



INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 139 

sounded like scolding all the time." Here we 
are speaking of sacrificing the powder of kind- 
ness, where the fault, perhaps, is more a misfor- 
tune than a fault. But let no one treat these 
suggestions lightly. Daily experience demon- 
strates their value. Least of all, let no one dis- 
miss the subject with the mere truism: ''Be 
natural, and your voice will always be right." 
If such teaching would have reformed these 
faults, but few charges of the kind would lay 
against the pulpit to-day. It is, in fact, simply 
begging the question, which is. What is it to be 
natural? Man has no natural gifts which are 
perfected by instinct. All the excellence of any 
gift which he possesses, is attributable essen- 
tially to art and education. 

The law of kindness is often infracted by an 
indiscreet use of words and phrases^ proper 
enough in themselves and in the proper time. 
How often do we meet with religious teachers, 
from the pulpit to the exhorter, that seem to 
claim that, because Christ called people hypo- 
crites on a most appropriate occasion, they are 
to employ the same epithet on almost any occa- 
sion. And because whited walls, sepulchers, 
vipers, spoilers of widows' houses, etc., were em- 
ployed by Christ but once, perhaps, in a minis- 



140 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

try of three years, these same epithets are to dance 
through half their discourses. And, as to the 
" terrors of the law," strange and magniloquent 
descriptions of the state of the lost, why it would 
seem if they were to learn moderation on these 
subjects they would, indeed, be robbed of all 
their thunder. " Pa," said the little boy, " didn't 
the preacher swear though to-day? was he 
mad ?" Let every one such go and learn what 
this text meaneth : " A word fitly spoken is like 
apples of gold in pictures of silver." This style 
of preaching and exhorting, though not so 
intended, fails to cherish the power of kind- 
ness. 

But worse than all that we have yet said, does 
the law of kindness suffer among us when contro- 
versial intercourse arises. Lamentably true has 
this been of our press, numerous and largely in 
the majority as are many of the noble examples 
to the contrary. We do not say that our writers 
are wanting in manliness or in magnanimity, 
any more than they are in ability. At least, 
the exceptions are exceptions. But it is only 
due to truth to say, humiliating as is the con- 
fession, that rarely do two Methodist preachers 
meet in discussion, in the columns of a newspa- 
per, without some sacrifice of mutual good feel- 



INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 141 

ing, and a manifest disposition, before they close, 
to digress from the subject they are dissecting, 
and by way of episode thrust sharply at each 
other's real or fancied weaknesses. Here, what 
we are wont to call '^personalities" arise. 
While we can offer no apology for this, further 
than that of the weakness of our common hu- 
manity, we may say, that there is a reason ex- 
tending far back in our history that has tended 
largely and imperceptibly to produce this state 
of things. For several generations of our itin- 
erants, in different localities, they had to contend 
inch by inch for the ground which they gained ; 
contend with the ministry of other sects, who 
looked upon Methodists as ignorant interlopers ; 
not subjects of argument, but fit subjects only for 
ridicule. These opponents could appreciate no 
pay but in their own kind. The fool must needs 
be answered according to his folly ; and scarcely 
less prepared was society to appreciate argu- 
ment destitute of this appendage. It has always 
been unfortunate for the kindness and etiquette 
of debate, where sect has been incessantly grap- 
pling with sect. Man's religious prejudices are 
the strongest of his nature, and where an honest 
preference first degenerates into prejudice, and 
this again into bigotry, there is no bitterness of 



142 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REYIYALS. 

opposition or expression of whicli the heart fails 
to become a fountain. 

Butj after conquering a peace with our neigh- 
bors, and becoming ourselves organized and ex- 
tended, our papers becoming established as a 
medium of intercourse, and questions of order, 
discipline, policy, etc., arising among ourselves 
for discussion, too much of the same polemical 
spirit and system of tactics prevailed among our- 
selves. We but register here what we believe 
to be a fact, and do it with profound regret, that 
the oldest habitual and most useful writers 
among us now, are not the least addicted to the 
very fault which we are considering ; and, at 
the same time that we venerate that class of 
men, we feel that there is an apology for this 
weakness in them that never ought to be pleaded 
by their juniors. It is much to be regretted 
that many of the rising generation of writers are 
given to imitate the weaknesses of our seniors, 
without being able to imitate their strength. 
Reform, reform, must be prosecuted in our cur- 
rent periodical literature. "If the man that 
wrote that is a preacher," said a young convert, 
on reading an article in one of the Advocates 
the other day, "I don't want to hear him preach 
until he is converted over again. He writes as 



INFEACTIONS OF THE TAW OF KINDNESS. 143 

if he had no religion." How awfully suggestive 
the remark, when what the hand puts on paper 
may chance to be a living epistle, read and 
known of all men until the judgment ! How 
true, also, to the Bible was the sentiment of this 
young brother ! ''He that saith he is in the 
light, and hateth his brother, is in the darkness 
until now." Brethren, have we forgotten that 
our '.'words do eat as doth a canker?" and 
that it is the " soft answer that turneth away 
wrath?" 



IM HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 



I 

CHAPTEE XV. 

THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 

REVENGE ALWAYS A VICE — ANTICDOTE OF COL. GARDINER — 
REVENGE PERPETUATES, BUT FORGIVENESS EXTERMINATES 

WRONG — ^REACTING POWER OP REVENGE SMALL RESENTMENTS 

SINFUL THE FACT ILLUSTRATED — LEGAL PUNISHMENT OP 

CRIMTNALS NOT REVENGE — SUGGESTIVE PRINCIPLES FORGIVE- 
NESS AND MERCY FORGIVENESS ESSENTIAL TO REVFV^ALS 

SOLEMNITY OF THE SUBJECT. 

The Gospel absolutely forbids every form of 
revenge. And yet, with a heart uncontrolled by 
grace, this is one of the strongest natural impulses 
of our depravity. To perfectly shun this sin, 
requires a steady pei^everance in self-denial, as 
rare, we fear, as it is ennobUng and elevating in 
the Christian character. Is'o man was ever a 
great man, not to say a good one, who could not 
afford to forgive an enemy, to overcome evil 
with good. The pious Col. Gardiner was once 
insufferably insulted by a rash upstart of an in- 
ferior officer. Though his sword hung by his 
side, with steady nerve and dignified meekness, 
he drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and 
wiped the spittle from his face, remarking, 



THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 145 

" Young man, could I wipe thy blood from my 
conscience as easily as I can wipe thy foul 
saliva from my face, I had killed thee in a mo- 
ment." At first, his friends poured contempt 
upon his rigid Christian principles, but when 
they saw the young man trembling and sneak- 
ing away to write an apology, they felt that they 
were in the presenceof a transforming greatness, 
heavenly and sublime. Revenge perpetuates 
the very evil which it seeks to cure, while for- 
giveness alone puts a stop to its ravages. How 
strikingly is this illustrated in the life of the 
savage, where no less than deadly revenge for 
injuries is ever thought of. A family feud may 
boil for centuries, until the two tribes, under 
their respective chieftains, may both become 
swallowed up in the fiery maelstrom of revenge. 
In civilized life, revenge may assume types less 
savage, but not less deadly in its hate, and scarce- 
ly less fatal in its effects. The man who pursues 
revenge, is pursuing a fiery flying serpent over 
deserts barren of the emblems of afi<ection and 
hope, and whatever the consequences to his 
victim, that serpent will finally return and nestle 
in his own bosom. The eternal law of God can 
no more be violated with impunity, than could 

one leap from a precipice, expecting that the 

10 



14:6 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 

laws of gravity would be suspended for his safe 
descent. " If ye forgive not men their trespasses, 
neither will your heavenly Father forgive 
yours." ^^ 

And here we would observe, let no one pre- 
sume that the law of forgiveness may not be 
violated as certainly by the little as by the 
much. A brother may have provoked me to 
retaliation in a matter seemingly trivial, and I 
seek the first opportunity for retribution, "to 
be up with him." I may be successful in my 
attempts. The occurrence may be forgotten, 
and yet in my future intercourse with that 
brother, our passage-at-arms is almost sure to 
have a resurrection. It is literally true that we 
forgive, but do not forget. Reciprocal revenge 
is almost sure to make brethren surround them- 
selves, like the harbor of some cities, with in- 
visible chevaux-de-frise. Now had I forborne 
taking revenge, I would have occupied a vant- 
age ground over this brother. My kindness 
would have disarmed him, and my exaniple 
duplicated itself. 

Not only is revenge so strongly instinctive to 
depravity, but, like the Eden tempter, it com- 
pounds its subtle lotion ; it assumes as many 
forms as the fabled Proteus. It is felt to be sweet. 



THE LAW OF FOKGIVENESS. 147 

We sometimes reason ourselves into its justice. 
It is often thought to be necessary to reform an 
offender. Let the student of Christian ethics 
carefully scrutinize, in the light of the Gospel, 
these false maxims. '' If thine enemy be hungry, 
give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give 
him water to drink : for thou shalt heap coals of 
fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward 
thee." The protection of society requires the 
legal infliction of punishment upon the offender. 
But this is not revenge. It is justice. By such 
proceedings the sum of human sufferings is less- 
ened. " Much better that one suffer than many." 
So, also, there are circumstances where personal 
injury must needs be inflicted, in obedience to 
the law of self-preservation. I awake and smite 
the burglar to death, who, with hand upon the 
tlu'oat, is seeking my life. The deed is neither 
revenge nor murder. Nor am I to be accused of 
ijiflicting injuries, though he should prove to be 
my next-door neighbor, and, like the extraor- 
dinary Webster case, in Boston, a lovely and in- 
nocent family experience that life forever 
is shrouded in gloom. Nothing should be 
esteemed more sacred to one than his reputation, 
and if I become the victim of slander, and noth- 
ing can save my reputation but the exposure 



148 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

of the character of a witness, this also is not re- 
venge. But no limit but an impossibility should 
be put to our exertions to live peaceably with all 
men, whether they will reciprocate the effort or 
not. "If it he possible^ as much as in you lieth, 
live peaceably with all men." 

In accordance with the last-named principle, 
we are not to wait for the brother who is the first 
offender, to first propose terms of reconciliation, 
but we are to admonish him of his duty, and 
affectionately urge upon him an interview, and 
thus seek to be reconciled to our brother. So 
sacred is this duty, that it seems almost to take 
precedence of prayer. " If thou bring thy gift to 
the altar, and there rememberest that thy 
brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy 
gift before the altar, and go thy way ; first be 
reconciled to thy brother, and then come and 
offer thy gift.'' " If ye forgive men their tres- 
passes, your heavenly Father will also forgive 
you." 

In the above, we have but announced princi- 
ples, and pointed tliem with their proof texts. 
If they suggest to our readers the same lessons 
that they do to us, they will lay them low at the 
foot of the cross, exclaiming, " Who, then, can be 
saved ?" Like David, they will ejaculate, " The 



THE LAW OF FOKGIYENESS. Ii9 

arrows of the Almighty stick fast within me." 
Alas! who of us are not guilty of revenge? at 
least, of that mitigated and gentler form called 
retaliation ? If we refuse to forgive a brother 
who repents, even for times innumerable, we 
cherish the spirit of revenge. "Then came 
Peter to him, and said. Lord, how often shall 
my brother sin against me, and I forgive him ? 
till seven times ? Jesus saith unto him, I say not 
unto thee, Until seven times ; but. Until seventy 
times seven." If we refuse to seek to be recon- 
ciled to a brother, who may have been the first 
aggressor in the offense, we are guilty of revenge, 
and have no claim upon Divine forgiveness until 
we repent. Surely the Spirit of eternal truth 
here searcheth the heart and trieth the reins, 
and pierceth to the dividing asunder of soul 
and spirit. Opposed as are these requirements 
to the natural heart, with God nothing is im- 
possible. Grace strengthening us, we can, 
thank God, tower above the littleness of doing 
wrong, because a brother, in some forgetful 
or wayward moment, has sought to inflict upon 
us wrong. 

There is a majesty in forgiveness which always 
elevates the sufferer above the offender. In no 
act does man more imitate his blessed Maker. 



150 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEYIYALS. 

" K any man have a quarrel against any, even 
as Christ forgave you, so also do ye." Here, for- 
giveness is nearly synonymous with that sweet 
word, mercy, of which the great poet of nature 
has thus truthfully spoken: 

"The quality of mercy is not strained; 
It droppeth as tlie gentle dew from heaven 
Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed ; 
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes ; 
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown." 

With a good man, the occasion of forgiveness 
becomes a feast to his conscience, and the force 
of his example restrains men before him, and 
purifies the moral atmosphere about him. He 
was smitten, but, like the sandal-tree, which the 
ax-man refuses to spare, it perfumes the air with 
frankincense from its wounds. 

The importance of forgiveness among brethren, 
of loving each other as little children, in the 
great work of revivals, needs, here, no more than 
the naming. No Church is ready for a revival 
until its merribership are living i/n peace with each 
other. Old quarrels, grudges, jealousies, bicker- 
ings, mutual suspicions, envyings, and strife, 
must be rolled from the bosom of the Church, 
just where Christian, in Bunyan, lost his burden. 



THE LAW OF FOEGIYENESS. 151 

And, as it respects the fruits of a revival, they 
should be preserved at once from the dry-rot of 
revenge. Young converts should be carefully 
taught the law of mutual forbearance and for- 
giveness. The luxuries of peace, the omnipo- 
tence of union among ourselves, and the God- 
conferred title of the peacemaker, should never 
be lost sight of. "Blessed are the peacemakers, 
for they shall be called the children of God." 
The young convert should be taught never to 
lose sight of the manners of the angels, the 
etiquette of heaven. Angels will not bandy 
epithets of reproach, even with Satan himself. 
" Michael the archangel, when, contending with 
the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, 
durst not bring against him a railing accusation, 
but said. The Lord rebuke thee." That clause 
in the Lord's prayer, " Forgive our trespasses, as 
we forgive those who trespass against us," should 
never be repeated but with a feeling of con- 
-sciousness that we love our enemies, and are 
willing to do good to those who despitefully use 
us. But, like Moses before the bush, we pause 
upon this holy ground to unsandal our feet; and, 
like Ilabakkuk, before his terrible vision of the 
great God, which overwhelmed him with con- 
fusion^ ^X\d a sense of self-annihilation, we can 



152 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

do no more than say, " Lord^ I home hea/rd thy 
&peech^ (Mid was afraid: O Lord, revive thy 
work in the midst of the years ; in the midst of 
the years make known; in wrath remember 
mercy." 



PIETY THE HOPE OF THE CHURCH. 153 



CHAPTEE XVL 

PIETY THE HOPE OF THE CHURCH. 

A WORD TO THE PREACHER — THE LIFE OR DEATH OF A CHURCH 

TO BE TESTED BY HER PIETY A PHOSPHORESCENT CHURCH LIFE 

ELEMENTS OF PIETY TREATED OF ABSURDITY OF DIS- 
BELIEF IN THE SPIRITUALITY OF PIETY SPIRITUALITY OF THE 

HEART ONLY CERTAINLY KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS — TEMPERS A3 
A TEST OF SPIRITUALITY — CONDUCT AND CREED AS PROOFS OF 
SPIRITUALITY — IMPORTANCE OF HOLY TEMPERS. 

Brother minister in the glorious work of revivals, 
even at the risk of some repetition, we wish to 
press some thoughts further, which may be ap- 
propriately arranged under the above caption. 
They may suggest to you an appropriate pulpit 
theme, and thus aid you in the great and only 
work to which you so readily subordinate all 
work, the work of saving perishing souls. 

Piety, that shall be the rule, and not the ex- 
ception; a pious pulpit; a pious officiary ; pious 
fathers, and mothers, and children ; three quar- 
ters of a million of Methodists, generally, if not 
universally pious! Who could calculate the 
efiicacy of such leaven in the three measures of 
meal; of such salt for a corrupted earth; of such 



154 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVITALS. 

a great light in a dark world ? Piety is the only 
principle of Church life that makes the existence 
of that Church conservative and regenerative in 
its effects. It is, in fact, the only life that distin- 
guishes a live from a dead Church. A dead 
Church may shine by its doctrines and by its 
learning; but this light is phosphorescent, and 
only decoys to sloughs of deeper, though it may 
be morf^e refined sensuality. 

We will speak of piety as it respects its 
spirituality, its intelligence, motives, and indi- 
viduality. As it respects its spirituality, God 
is a spirit, and acceptable woi^hip can only be 
rendered him in the spirit. The fact of the 
Spirit's presence in religion, though incompre- 
hensible as to manner, is quite comprehensible 
as to the fact. It is a fact of revelation, and 
has its home no more in mystery, than a thou- 
sand daily familiar facts of nature. Any num- 
ber of examples will here suggest themselves to 
the thoughtful. Analogy speaks out in favor of 
the same great truth. If the Spirit of God gar- 
nish the heavens ; if it operate, with or without 
means, on gross and insensible matter, moving 
this great univei-se on its rounds of harmony and 
grandeur, as the body is moved by the soul, is it 
unreasonable to suppose that the souls of men, 



PIETY THE HOPE OF THE CHURCH. 155 

God's offspring, may be quite sensible to the Spir- 
it's touch, voice, and teachings ? Does the great 
heart of boundless goodness throb up against 
an inanimate clod, and yet, between that heart 
and an infinitely higher order of existence, does 
there exist an impassable gulf, a terrible vacuum? 
Is the society of man, that embraces humanity 
in one brotherhood, and that sweeps into another 
world, and includes, also, its unseen population, 
to end this side of society with our Maker ? The 
affirmative of the thought is an aggravation of 
the crudities and cruelties of atheism. Such a 
view unhearts Christianity, and leaves it a mere 
carcass, to be ever and anon galvanized into 
mimic life, by the fervors of fashion or poetry, 
superstition or sentimentality. Thank God, 
revelation here stands boldly out. It pleads, 
first of all, the sinner's sensible communion with 
God, through Christ, by the aid of the Holy 
Spirit. '' Christ in you, the hope of glory." 
" The Spirit beareth witness," etc. 

But the presence of the Spirit can only safely 
be judged of by its fruits. And, first, these 
fruits commence their growth, and are seen in 
the moral dispositions of men, far more, eveuj 
than in the rectitude of their conduct ; and, cer- 
tainly, far more than in the soundness of their 



156 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

judgments, or harmony of their views on ques- 
tions of casuistry, ethics, and doctrine. The 
latter have to do with the intelligence ; the for- 
mer with the moral biases and emotions of the 
mind. The one has reference to what a man 
knows; the other to the purity of his heart. 
The heart can alone be made pure by the Spirit. 
This purity the Spirit imparts to even the weak- 
est in wisdom, the wayfaring man, though a fool. 
The latter deeds are to be learned by efforts of 
the disciple : " Take my yoke upon you, and 
learn of me." " Search the Scriptures." 

We are brought naturally to consider intelli- 
gence as an element of strength in piety. We 
prefer, however, to leave some thoughts upon 
this topic, and the others above named, until 
the next chapter. We close with a word upon 
Christian tempers as an element of power in 
Christian example. Here, we verily believe, is 
a subject of paramount importance in relation 
to the Church's strength and aggressiveness. 
The temper in which a deed is done often goes 
further with a witness, in making up his judg- 
ment of one's religion, than the character of the 
deed itself. Nothing is more manifest than this : 
if the dispositions and tempers of professed 
Christians habitually manifest themselves as the 



PIETY THE HOPE OF THE CHUECH. 157 

dispositions and tempers of the world around are 
manifested, men will attribute to such Christians 
nothing but the form and shell of Christianity. 
Let but the flush of fretfulness or anger redden 
upon the cheek, or murmur in the voice of the 
occupant of the pulpit, at causes that should 
only occasion him grief, and furnish him an op- 
portunity for the exercise of forbearance, and that 
man's preaching is vain. Let it be seen that an- 
ger burns as violently in the bosom of the pro- 
fessing and the praying, and breaks forth as 
readily, when it is appealed to, and the sinner 
will silently ask himself, " How dwelleth the 
love of God in that man ?" Let but the pride 
of opinion, a mere egotism, a spirit of spite, keep 
one from acknowledging his errors, when he 
has been clearly proven in the wrong, whether 
these be errors of the intellect, or errors of con- 
duct, and it is hard to believe that man's body 
a temple of the Holy Ghost. Let the man who 
would buy, and sell, and get gain, decrease in 
liberality as he increases in goods, and exhibit, 
as he improves by practice, an admirable skill at 
driving a bargain, and then smile triumphantly 
over the advantage of questionable honor which 
he had gained, and it will not be easy to attribute 
to that man a very high degree of spirituality. 



168 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

Let polemic ecclesiastics practice sophistry for 
the sake of their cause, play upon words, and 
commit diversions by sarcastic quibbles, and 
practice proving their points by illegitimate syl- 
logisms and false analogies ; such men will soon 
be suspected of being destitute of the spirit of 
truth, as they certainly will be suspected of being 
destitute of the spirit of religion. We repeat it, 
the heart of man can be read more readily in 
his tempers than in his actions. These tempers 
are loopholes through wooded landscapes, that 
exhibit the sterile background; the heavens 
angry with storms, or open upon flowery lawns 
or fruitful fields, over which bends the sky in 
the deep blue of its repose and purity. Such 
are the relations of man's tempers and actions. 
And it is truly remarkable, that among the 
largest enumeration of the fruits of the Spirit, 
found in the New Testament, tempers, ratlier 
than actions, are enumerated as evidences of the 
spirituality of the Christian's character: "But 
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance : against such there is no law. And 
they that are Christ's, have crucified the flesh, 
with the affections and lusts. If we live in the 
Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." 



INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF PIETY. 159 



CHAPTEE XYII. 

INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF PIETY. 

WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE DEFINITION OF TRUTH WHEN KNOWL- 
EDGE BECOMES POWER DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE 

AND WISDOM THE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE THE CHRISTIAN 

SHOULD SEEK THE BIBLE-READING CHRISTIAN SECURITY 

AGAINST APOSTASY THE BIBLE AND POPULAR LITERATURE 

THE NEWSPAPER AN INTERPRETER OF THE BIBLE CHRISTIANS 

AND THE PROMISES. 

"I WILL give you pastors according to my heart, 
which shall feed you with knowledge and under- 
standing." " My people are destroyed for lack 
of knowledge." "In everything ye are enrich- 
ed by him in all knowledge." "Wisdom and 
knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, 
and strength of thy salvation." 

In offering some thoughts under this caption 
in the last chapter, we spoke principally of the 
spirituality of piety, and promised to resume this 
subject by offering some thoughts upon intelli- 
gence as an element of power, in piety, upon 
motives and individiiality. 

Of the importance of cultivating the intellect 
as well as the heart, in a life of piety, the Scriptures 



160 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

just quoted treat most conclusively. These texts 
are but a brief selection from a very large class. 
But what is knowledge ? And ^vhat the princi- 
pal branches that Christians generally in private 
life should pursue ? When one knows a thing, 
the simple rrieaning of that is, he conceives of a 
thing as it exists. And as truth is no more than 
the condition of things as they exist, such a man, 
as far as he goes, has a knowledge of the truth. 
But this truth may do him no good if he fail to 
appropriate it, or attempt to appropriate it 
wrongly, or neglect it altogether. Knowledge 
only becomes power by a proper use. The man 
who makes the running stream turn the w^heel 
of his mill, or the wind fill the sails of his ship, 
must first know the laws of gravity and the 
course of the w^nds. The more skillfully this 
knowledge be applied to the great practical pur- 
poses of life, the more wisely are they applied. 
Here, then, is the general diflference between 
the meaning of the word knowledge and wis- 
dom as employed in the Scriptures. The one is 
an acquisition of truth, the other relates to the 
manner in which that truth is employed for the 
benefit of ourselves and others. A man of 
knowledge is not always a wise man, and the 
man who may be called truly wise may some- 



INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELE]VIENT OF PIETY. 161 

times be very limited in knowledge. " Great 
men are not always wise," and the wise man is 
very apt to be better off than the great man ; 
hence " with all your getting get wisdom." 

But of the knowledge which the pious man 
should study constantly to acquire, we would 
not disparage a knowledge of the sciences ; a 
knowledge of nature's great laws, which will 
reveal to the student so much of God, of his wis- 
dom and his goodness. But it falls to the lot of 
but few Christians to be students in the technical 
sense of that word : far the larger mass of good 
people will be quite limited in scholastic attam- 
ments. It is the few only who will devote their 
lives to the majestic mysteries of astronomy, the 
wonders of chemistrj'-, or the hidden beauties of 
philology. As the miner reveals the hidden 
treasures of earth for the rest of mankind, so 
these devotees of hard study constitute the few 
that work for the world in matters of science. 
All honor to them. Yet is there a common 
ground, which every Christian can occupy for 
the purpose of adding to his faith not merely 
virtue, that is, virtuous dispositions, holy desires, 
and the like, but knowledge. And in a hasty 
specification of the branches of knowledge which 

every Christian should pursue, we would first 

11 



162 HELPS TO TIIE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

name the reading of the Holy Scriptures, the 
reading of them carefully, humbly, fervently, 
and prayerfully ; all of which, with much more, 
is included in the phrase, " Search the Scrip- 
tures." The critical reading of the sacred text 
may be left to men of learning and of leisure ; 
to those whose business it is thus to sift out the 
whole idea of the Spirit. But the daily reading 
of the sacred text without such helps will be 
found to the pious mind a perpetual repast, a 
well of water springing up within him unto ever- 
lasting life. He will find his Bible an Eden, 
without the forbidden tree ; an Eden in which 
the tree of life has been restored. How many 
saints does biography trace through life, in which 
the well-thumbed Bible, without note or com- 
ment, was their daily companion, and found a 
place under their dying pillow! How many 
men, distinguished for their learning and re- 
search, does history show us expressing a regret, 
at the sundown of life that they have read the 
Holy Scriptures so little ! In addition to that 
spiritual-mindedness which will surround the 
soul of the daily reader of the Holy Scriptures 
as does an atmosphere of fragrance the flower, 
such a one will never be found wanting in those 
intellectual qualities which constitute the intel- 



INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF PIETY. 163 

ligent man. Possessing, as do the Holy Scrip- 
tures, a living freshness of truth, a perpetual 
adaptedness, they lead the mind to the pursuit 
of subordinate and cotemporaneous knowledge. 
A man who reads his Bible diligently will read 
other good books and works no less. He who 
searches the Scriptures will find them to be not 
merely a record of things past, but such a record 
as will prompt him to a study of the present ; he 
will understand better, and take a deeper inter- 
est in the ministrations of the pulpit ; he will be 
prompted to study the history, order, genius, 
and workings of the Church of which he is a 
member ; he will become in that edifice a lively 
stone ; he will find himself feeling the pressure 
of individual responsibility. And as the best 
security against apostasy is to keep Christians 
hard at work, he will find that his knowledge is 
a fundamental contribution to his stability. " If 
ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye 
shall bear much fruit." 

Christians in this age can scarcely be said to 
be seriously wanting in intelligence. It is an 
age of books and intelligence. God, in his 
providence, seems to have said, "Let there be 
light," and Christendom is radiant from a 
myriad sources. We fear, however, that Chris- 



164: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

tians, in those superior mental acquisitions 
which constitute so largely the popular privi- 
lege of the times, do not begin to get knowledge 
at the right place. Begin not with the news- 
paper or the periodical, but with the Bible. 
The Bible will render both of the former neces- 
sary. And unlike the voices of the seven thun- 
ders that were sealed up, the voices of the popu- 
lar press will contribute to the interpretation of 
the sacred text, and Providence will be seen, in 
prophecy, on His glorious march to the world's 
final rescue. O, for more Bible-reading Chris- 
tians ! O, for a Church which, like the pious 
Bereans of old, should constantly search the 
Scriptures, amid these stirring times, to see 
whether these things are so ! 

We fear, also, that Christians err in not ap- 
propriating the knowledge they possess as they 
ought, to the high purposes of duty and holy 
living. The man who knows the powers of the 
water-wheel, but refuses to appropriate them ; 
the potency of steam, but treats it with neglect, 
is a dwarf in material progress ; and were society 
generally to act upon this principle, it would 
soon relapse into barbarism. Christian, do you 
fail to apply the promises of God, with which 
you have been made so familiar, from the Sab- 



INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF PIETY. 165 

bath school to the sacred desk, in the day of 
temptation ? or do you refuse to feast daily upon 
this bread, which comes down from heaven, to 
drink daily at this fountain, of which if a man 
drink he shall never thirst? Do you fail to 
meditate upon those holy mysteries of our sacra- 
ments, and doctrines of our creed, which have 
tempted the prying inquiries of angels ? 



166 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 



CHAPTEE XVm. 

MOTIVES AND INDIVIDUALITY AS ELEMENTS OF 
PIETY. 

MOTIVES — DIVIDED INTO INNOCENT AND RELIGIOUS AND BOTH 

DISINTERESTED BENEVOLENCE SINISTER MOTIVES — TWO THINGS 

TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE DOCTRINE OF MOTIVES THE MAN 

WHO HANGS OUT HIS OWN SIGN INDIVIDUALITY A CHARAC- 
TER FOUND IN THE WAY REWARD PROPORTIONED TO ABILITY 

— ANECDOTE OP A GREAT GENERAL — THE LONDON MERCHANT 

IMPORTANT LAW OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH — REVIVAL HELP-HINTS. 

Having, in previous chapters, spoken of spiritu- 
ality and intelligence^ as elements of power in 
piety, we come now to speak of the Christian's 
motives^ and of his responsibility or individual' 
ity. The doctrine of motives involves the most 
delicate shades of casuistry, the profoundest dis- 
tinctions in Christian ethics. Much confusion 
of thought, and incorrect judgment of the con- 
duct of our fellows, have been the result of not 
understanding when motives are innocent ; when 
they are pious, and when they are sinful, or 
purely selfish. One may do me a favor simply 
to win my good-will. There may be nothing 
religious in it, and yet, at the same time, there 



MOTIVES, INDIYIDUALITY, ETC. 167 

may be nothing wrong in it; it is an innocent 
motive. Another may do me a favor, both to 
obtain my good- will, but, first and foremost, in 
the needed kindness which he bestowed upon 
me, he sought the glory of God, and was ac- 
tuated by a sense of duty to him. Here the 
motive, in some sense, doubled itself, and yet it 
was purely religious. A brother may give 
largely of his means for the erection of a place 
of worship near his own dwelling, or where such 
an improvement will advance the price of his 
lands, and he may be properly enough influ- 
enced by these motives, and yet these minor 
motives may be so subordinated to the higher, 
that they may be perfectly righteous before 
God. One of the most common, and, at the 
same time, one of the most grossly imcharitable 
views w4iich we can take of the motives of our 
brethren, is to suppose them always selfish, 
whenever they seem prompted by temporal in- 
terest, though the object to be promoted is pure- 
ly a righteous one. The phrase " disinterested 
benevolence," is only comparative in its mean- 
ing. The Almighty never designed us to do 
right without promoting our own interest. And 
he wlio pretends to have lost sight of this, of 
having become wholly insensible to it, is simply 



168 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

a fanatic, as his own betrayed selfishness will 
soon prove. 

There are purely selfish and sinful motives. 
Men may be stimulated to deeds of goodness, 
wholly from the hope of gain. They may pam- 
per you with kindness, and load you with favors 
that they may the more readily make you their 
victim. How fearfully prominent among men 
are the workings of such motives ! How dis- 
gusting are they to magnanimous goodness ! 
How oflfensive to piety, and to that God who 
searcheth the heart and trieth the reins! How 
careful should we be to scrutinize our motives ! 
"Thou, God, seest me," like the voice of the 
great sea in the shell of its shore, should dwell 
in our souls as a living whisper of warning. 

In the doctrine of motives, then, two things 
should always be carefully considered. First, 
we should prayerfully and impartially scrutinize 
our own. Secondly, we should be as cautious as 
the foot of sensitive veneration when walking 
among graves, while sitting in judgment on those 
of others. " Judge not, that ye be not judged." 
The man who is always criticising the motives of 
Others, hangs out his own sign. He speaks 
from experience. He may judge wrongfully of 
others, but others will judge rightly of him. It 



MOTIVES, INDIVIDUALITY, ETC. 169 

is a very low view to take, of even unregener- 
ate human nature, to suppose it incapable of 
being prompted to worthy deeds by motives 
destitute of piety, and yet these motives be in 
themselves innocent and honorable. But that 
readiness to attribute to our Irethren sinister 
motives for all that thej^ do and say, is a very 
unsightly grace. 

By individuality^ as an element of strength in 
piety, we mean, first, that all that voluntary hu- 
mility or mock piety that induces one to disclaim 
all influence or power in matters of religion, etc., 
claiming that he is a mere binnacle on the old 
ship Zion, should be ignored and despised. It is 
a mere excuse for slothfulness in the vineyard of 
the Lord. It is not a true humility, which 
always elevates its possessor, but a mock lowli- 
ness, which degrades the true man, and makes 
the sinner in him bad-natured. In Church mat- 
ters, none are more ready to dictate what should 
be done, than those of this very class, who claim 
that they cannot do anything. Than they, 
none are less apt to be contented with what is 
done. Of such persons we say, they are want- 
ing in individuality in matters of religion. As 
they do nothing, they are actually wortli noth- 
ing; and every brother will find them very 



170 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

much in the way in the time of revivals. The 
latter fact, however, with all their humility, 
they are slow to believe. They do not stand up 
in the great spiritual edifice as supporting pillars, 
but obstruct its entrance, or lie like broken 
pews, unfit for use, yet occupying room. Every 
Christian should remember that the Church, as 
a whole, is composed of individuals ; individuals 
compose its primitive elements, as certainly as 
do particles compose the earth, or drops the 
ocean. Now, every one of the self-neutralized 
elements can scarcely be compared to anything 
else than those branches of the true vine, which, 
from bearing no fruit, were to be cast forth to be 
withered and burned. It is not the much or lit- 
tle that individual Christians can do, that is to be 
at all taken into the account, in the consideration 
of this question of individual responsibility. It is 
simply this : Does the Christian do what he can 
for the upbuilding of the Church and the conver- 
sion of the world? It is the ability of the 
Christian to do, and not the quantity of what 
he does, by which he is to be judged. The 
widow's mite, or a cup of cold water given to a 
disciple, may, under certain circumstances, rise 
into a sublimer virtue before God, than the 
oflfering of a man who should endow a college 



MOTIVES, INDIVIDUALITY, ETC. 171 

with a quarter of a million, to be a fountain of 
usefulness to flow on to the judgment. Let no 
Christian, then, be deterred from the most active 
efforts in the walks of piety, because of his sup- 
posed inability. In the language of a great 
general, in reply to a compliment bestowed 
upon him, for having obtained a most hazardous 
victory : ^' Sir, we did what we could." This is 
all our heavenly Father expects of us ; and all 
who do what they can, occupy the same plat- 
form of honor in the estimation of our unerring 
Judge. 

At the same time he so ordains, that an attempt 
to improve the one talent, will duplicate it. 
Christians who try to do something for the Lord, 
will not long try unsuccessfully. In the lan- 
guage of a successful London merchant : " My 
capital, when I commenced in business, consisted 
of shillings. I began at once to give a portion 
of the proceeds, in the form of pennies, to the 
Lord. My business capital soon increased to 
pounds ; and from pence I gave shillings, and 
from shillings guineas." This law of growth in 
ability to do good, iy doing good, applies as 
well to matters of mind as to matters of money; 
while the heart that is perpetually set on good 
deeds, is being led into the green pastures, and 



172 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

by the still waters of eternal love and tranquillity. 
Every brother, we apprehend, who feels toward 
the Church he would nurse and vivify, as a 
mother toward her first-born, will be glad to 
find these help-hints to the creation of revival 
power. 



VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 173 



CHAPTER XIX. 

VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 

For the want of remembering the import of 
our caption, false estimates are often made of 
ministerial talent. Many are prone to set up one 
standard for all. Every preacher must come to 
their particular measure, or he is second-rate. 
With some, the prestige of a great education, 
with the name belled with literary titles, becomes 
a charity that covereth a multitude of sins. With 
another, these very qualifications excite suspicion. 
The college-bred man is necessarily dull, arid, 
and dry, a conclusion, by the way, as untrue as 
it is unphilosophical, there being as few dry 
preachers among the educated, as a class, as 
among the non-educated. With another, the rea- 
soner — the dealer in syllogisms — is the preacher 
of his fancy ; while, with another, the man is 
mere mediocre unless he can deal in flights of 
fancy, flowers of rhetoric, and gorgeous and 
original creations of the imagination. With 
another, (and he is the representative of a very 



174: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF BEVIYALS. 

large class,) the preacher is always perfection, no 
matter how prosy, diffuse, and superficial his 
thoughts, if he be but only able to burn himself 
out of the brush at last^, in other words, if some 
fifteen or twenty minutes of the conclusion of 
his sermon be employed in the highly impas- 
sioned. With another, the eccentric man is the 
model of pulpit excellence; he aboimds in 
flashes of wit, quaint sayings, facetious anecdotes, 
etc., etc. I am for the learned preacher, says 
one ; I am afraid of the man who preaches from 
his learning, says another ; I am for the man who 
makes me think, says another ; I, for him who 
makes me cry, says another ; and I for him who 
makes me laugh ; and thus it is, some are for 
Paul, and some for Apollos, while Christ may be 
forgotten in the contest. jSTow, the truth is, that 
he who would correctly estimate ministerial 
talent and qualification, would place a high esti- 
mate upon all that diversity of talent just repre- 
sented in the classes of ministers referred to. 
No invidious distinction should be drawn. I^o 
extolling of one above measure, and the depre- 
ciation of the rest. All are necessary. " Tliere 
are a diversity of gifts." Were there but one 
gift for the pulpit, and that gift the most brilliant, 
men would soon become disgusted with it by 



VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 175 

reason of its monotony. Yariety is a necessity of 
the human mind. We should be careful, then, 
in speaking of ministers, by what rule we esti- 
mate their gifts. We may do them great in- 
justice, and ourselves also. For the man who 
cannot go and hear the preacher that happens 
not to be a special favorite, or the brother who 
cannot engage heartily in his pastor's support, 
unless he happen to be of the class of preachers 
for which he has taken a particular fancy, are 
both alike guilty of folly. To expect all men to 
preach alike, would be to require that all men 
be constituted alike. This is no more true to the 
great law of Providence in the case, than it 
would be to require that the trees of the wood 
should all be of the same species. What if all 
forests were composed of the sugar maple? 
Well, mankind might have a sweet time, espe- 
cially about sugar-making season; but they 
would, undoubtedly, soon feel that it would be 
much better to do with less sugar, and have a 
little oak and ash among their ligneous posses- 
sions. " There are a diversity of gifts." Minis- 
terial merit, also, should be estimated in the 
light of its fruits. It often happens that the 
very men upon whose talents we place the low- 
est estimate, are the most highly honored of 



1 76 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF RETITAES. 

God in the conversion of souls and the work of 
building up his Church. By their fruits we 
should judge them. But even in this there is 
great danger of mistake. It is not always the 
brother whose fruits are among the most showy 
kind who is to be ranked foremost among the 
apostles. There is such a thing as '' preparing 
the way of the Lord/' while another, again, may 
herald him, and in so doing meet him. There 
is such a thing as one preacher taking care of 
the '* stuff '' that another may have collected. 
It is not always the preacher that we hear 
the most about who is actuallv doino: most 
for God. There is a talent that works in sil^ice, 
like the law that crystallizes the gem in its un- 
discovered hiding-place. There are others, again, 
who, like a summer rain, seldom come with- 
out bringing thunder and lightning with them. 
Both are necessary. " There are a diversity of 
gifts." 

But, after all, there is one fact about the 
preacher and preaching, which may be men- 
tioned almost as a universally attractive quality, 
a quality, we mean, on which human nature 
everywhere will place about the same estimate. 
To this quality we give the single title of 
€arrve8t7iess. This word we would make generic 



VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 177 

of strong sympathy with an audience, self-for- 
getfulness and absorption in a subject. Such a 
speaker will speak to men true to nature, what- 
ever be his degree of education ; and if his gifts 
be even but ordinary, men will flock to listen to 
his stirring mission. He makes them feel^ and 
this is the true test of oratory. The soul of elo- 
quence is feeling, and eloquence can never have 
a substitute. Such a speaker, if he be evidently 
called of God, need fear no competition, no op- 
position. Such a speaker is the product of no 
system of education. Like the spirit within the 
wheels in the prophet's vision, his masterly pow- 
ers are born with him. The happy constitution- 
ality that makes a highly earnest preacher, like 
the powers of the poet, must be born with him. 
Education may modify and chasten it, but so 
far from chilling, it will become fuel to the 
lire. The absence of much education will not 
always prevent it from putting forth its great 
power. The preacher whom education alone 
can make is seldom worth having after he 
is made. The preacher whom education can 
spoil had not much about him to spoil. The 
preacher who claims to be the better off be- 
cause he never had educational advantages, is 

either a fanatic, or else he has obtained that 
12 



178 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

very education in the absence of these advant- 
ages. May Godj in his mercy, give to the 
Church, not a Paul, not an Apollos, not a Bo- 
anerges, not a Peter, not a John alone, but a 
mighty host of all the classes represented by 
these revered names. The Church needs a 
diversity of gifts. But he who cannot, in some 
goodly degree, manifest, from constitutional 
sympathy, some of the earnestness or unction 
above named, will always find his clerical 
career a dull and cool one, however qualified or 
gifted in other respects. But the object of this 
chapter, more especially, is to rebuke that cap- 
tiousness in our membership that underrates the 
minister who happens not to be conformed to 
their model. In the promotion of revivals this 
will be found of the first moment, especially 
when the mania seizes the Church of sending 
for some favorite revivalist, a policy which 
generally results as in the instance of John eat- 
ing the little book ; the bitter is very apt to fol- 
low the sweet. 



THE PAST AND PRESENT. 179 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE PAST AND PRESENT — A CHARACTER. 

" Say not thou. What is the cause that the for- 
mer days were better than these ? for thou dost 
not inquire wisely concerning this." This scrip- 
ture teaches that there may be an erroneous ret- 
rospect, and deprecates it. A wise review of 
the past is, indeed, rare. To come to a correct 
judgment concerning it, the laws of the human 
mind must be well studied. We are often de- 
ceived for the want of self-knowledge. For ex- 
ample : the remembrance of pleasure is always 
fresher in the mind than the remembrance of 
pain. A hasty conclusion on this subject would, 
certainl}^, be contrary to the truth. The prin- 
ciple is announced by our Saviour, in his allu- 
sions to a mother's solicitude in the hour of her 
extremity, which, when over, " she remembereth 
no more the anguish for joy." For the want of 
due attention to this principle, there are many 
who exalt the merit of the past over the present, 
and say that the " former days were better than 



180 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIYALS. 

these." With them, the preachers of the pres- 
ent are pigmies, compared with those of the 
past ; and the piety of the present is so diluted 
with pride and formalism that " there is none 
that doeth good ; no, not one." Our churches, 
with steeples, are not as sacred as the former 
cabins of logs, which they have superseded ; and 
cushioned pews are much harder than rude 
benches. Our class-meetings have all died out; 
our prayer-meetings will soon call for obituary 
notices ; the Church is getting proud ; the world 
waxing worse than ever ; and it is as if Satan's 
chain had been loosed for a little season. 
" Why, we used to know every Methodist man by 
his dress, every Methodist w^oman by her bon- 
net, and the despised Methodists had come out 
from among the world. They were not of it, 
and were not, as now, like it. Tliey then under- 
stood this scripture, ' Come out from among 
them, and be ye separate.' We got happy at 
every meeting. The Church was in a state of 
continual revival. Sinners were flocking to it by 
scores and hundreds, like doves to the windows. 
O, those were joyful days! We don't have 
such times nowadays ; and it must be that the 
Church is backslidden." Here our croaking 
narrator heaved a sigh, and, suiting the action to 



THE PAST AND PRESENT. ISl 

the word, lie pointed toward the place where he 
attended meeting with a long, lank finger, com- 
pressed his thin lips over a large mouth, and 
threw himself forward, shrugging his shoulders 
as if he felt chilled to the heart with the 
Church's moral apostasy. After a groan or two, 
he resumed : " The extravagance of our preach- 
ers and their families, why, don't you think, it 
never used to cost us more than a quarter of a 
dollar for quarterage, and now they want me to 
pay five dollars a year for the support of the 
Gospel, and throw in something at a public col- 
lection every Sunday besides. Well, I wish I 
had died before old-fashioned Methodism was 
done away with ;" and here he put his hand in 
his pocket, and we left our brother to his cen- 
sorious cogitations and went on our way, indulg- 
ing a few thoughts. This brother has wholly 
overlooked the thousand and one little draw- 
backs upon that millennium of his fancy, in the 
past, his belief in which wholly unfits him for 
the present. If preachers preached so much 
better and abler then than now, the proof is 
wanting. If human nature in those days would 
have, or did always guard against an apostolic 
altercation, and keep a Judas out of the college 
of the evangelists, then was it holier than inspi. 



182 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIVALS. 

ration ever made it. If there was no pride 
taken even in plainness, no glorying in the evi- 
dences of one's humility in those palmy days of 
primitive simplicity, then the Methodism of 
thirty years ago, devoted and exalted as it was, 
has fallen very fast. If the rude conveniences 
for worship were more promotive of piety than 
the more tasty provisions of the present, then 
penance is a virtue. If strife among brethren, 
neighborhood tattle. Church trials, insubordina- 
tion, secession, hypocrisy, and Phariseeism, were 
never found to infest the Church in those palmy 
days, when Sabbath schools were nearly un- 
known, when our people had not the books and 
newspapei-s to read they have now — had not the 
material for their thought, nor the same motives 
to be diligent in business — then history has slan- 
dered them, and human nature, under the rule 
of " Young America," seems to have become 
something other than what it was. And as to 
the little then required to support the Gospel and 
our institutions, five dollars can now be as easily 
raised as the twentieth part of it then. And as 
to the sweeping assertion of the Church's apostasy, 
is not God the same, Christ the same, the Gos- 
pel the same ? Have not faith and prayer the 
same prevailing power ? and do we not resort to 



THE PAST AND PRESENT. 183 

the same sources and employ the same means ? 
and is not the same end present? Most cer- 
tainly. But our brother's erroneous retrospect 
is working a mighty mischief in his moral sen- 
timents. He judges not wisely of the past, and 
hence he is unprepared to appreciate the pres- 
ent. Have our readers ever met with this char- 
acter? 

Our brother in the work of promoting revi- 
vals willj we fear, often meet with this character, 
much to his annoyance. We here send him a 
daguerreotype likeness, that he may find no 
difficulty in identifying him. 



184 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 



CHAPTEE XXI. 

PASTORAL VISITING. 

THE FOOLISH PHYSICIAN AND PREACHER CONTRASTED — HOW POWER 

MAY BE COLLECTED FOR THE PULPIT JOHN B. GOUGH THE 

PEOPLE TO BE SEEN AT THEIR HOMES A GOOD PASTOR SELDOM 

IMPUTED AN INFERIOR PREACHER THE PREACHER WHO CANNOT 

VISIT ANECDOTE OF THE CRIMEA — THE MODEL TEACHER A 

MODEL PASTOR HEARTS ARE TO BE READ AS WELL AS BOOKS. 

What would be thought of the physician, who 
was wont to prescribe for his patients without 
acquainting himself with their symptoms, pre- 
scribe upon the principles of physiology common 
to all? Whatever his skill, would he not lose 
both patients and practice ? Now, the pastor, 
whose business it is to raise up a spiritual flock, 
who neglects personal intercourse with them for 
religious purposes, who neglects to look into 
their spiritual symptoms, their individualisms, and 
idiosyncrasies of experience, acts in spiritual 
matters precisely as this physician in medicinal. 
Pastoral visitation is an essential of success. 
The pulpit will always be found borrowing from 
it its principal power. The most eftective dis- 
courses are those in which the speaker seems 



r 



PASTORAL VISITING. 185 

best acquainted with the thoughts and experi- 
ences of the hearers. He seems to thread those 
thoughts, to be famihar with the hearers' private 
emotions, secret temptations, and little or great 
solicitudes. He is full also of anecdote and il- 
lustration, taken fresh from the life of the hour. 
Such a preacher everybody will hear gladly. 
This power of secretly learning from the people 
what they need to be told, is not peculiar to the 
pulpit. The popular lecturer resorts to these re- 
sources for his thunder. A Gough, Brown, and 
others, will be found collecting through the day 
by observance and intercourse, the principal, and, 
probably, the most interesting material of their 
lectures for the evening. The most important 
part of a preacher's study, is to study his people. 
His books are walking books. Far the largest 
portion of his library will speak out to him, and 
that voice in the power which it may impart to 
him may be as the voice from heaven which 
John heard. Intercourse with individuals of his 
flock never fails to endear them to him. The 
preacher is not presumed to be a common friend. 
The sacredness of his office encourages familiarity 
when he has once made the first advances as 
their spiritual adviser and sympathizer, and tlius 
it is tliat such friendship ripens into confidence 



186 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF BEYTVALS. 

and intimacy. O ! what a multitude of defects 
in the pulpit exhibitions of such a preacher will 
such a relation to his flock cover. Hence it is, 
that the preacher who visits is never found an 
unpopular, and seldom an unsuccessful preacher. 
These visits should be made to the houses of the 
people; "from house to house," are the words of 
Paul's journal in his pastoration. The farmer 
can indeed be seen in his field, the shoemaker 
on his bench, the mechanic at his plane, and the 
merchant at his desk, and it is all well, but not 
well enough. Would the pastor occupy a vant- 
age-ground of power ? Let him seek the hearth- 
side and the cradle-side; let him be seen among 
the children, no matter how lowly that home. 
Circumscribed as were the fishermen's huts of 
Galilee, that so often sheltered Christ, squalid 
and repulsive from nameless circumstances, it 
may be, yet in this act, like the symbolic 
horn in Habakkuk's vision, is the hiding of his 
power. His call will be appreciated, perhaps, as 
a condescension. His anxious inquiries about the 
welfare of the family, temporal as well as spirit- 
ual, will win their hearts. The lonely mother, 
whose every hour of life is engrossed with the 
care of a swelling group of children, and who 
has to battle hard and long with intruding want, 



PASTORAL VISITING. 187 

feels that a friend has come, and the balm of a 
sympathizing heart strengthens her afresh for 
her task and her trials. The young husband and 
father on whom the fortunes of life have not 
yet smiled very propitiously, and around whose 
soul the murky cloud of despondence has at 
times essayed to unfold itself, feels at once, here 
is a good man that careth for me. How like tow 
before the fire is opposition to such moral power, 
a power given to the pastor. O, fearful respon- 
sibility ! If the persons thus visited are Church 
members, it often becomes a new hegira in 
their spiritual history. If not members, they 
are secured as respecters and hearers. Nor are 
the pastor's visits less appropriate, though at 
times, perhaps, less powerful in their efiects at 
the homes of the more fortunate and the rich. 
Every man feels that when you seek him at his 
own home to do him good, you have taken a step 
BO bold that it becomes him to believe you in 
earnest. The law of hospitality diffuses the at- 
mosphere of courtesy about the interview, and 
the mutual restraint under which both are placed, 
prepares the way for appropriate caution and 
reciprocal kindness. Under such circumstances, 
the warnings of the Gospel and the lessons of 
piety, delivered in none of the cant of the sect, 



188 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 

in no spirit of obtrusiveness or assumption, and 
yet, so delivered as not to be edgeless, are 
often like the fatal arrow sent at a venture 
v^^hich smote the King of Israel between the 
joints of the harness. In all our experience, 
we have found that a good pastor was seldom 
reported an inferior preacher, while, other 
things being equal, his success in revival effort 
always distanced immeasurably the man who 
did not visit. 

But some will say, I cannot visit, I have no 
taste nor tact for it. Now, such preachers are a 
good deal like the nobleman's son, who procured 
a commission and went to the Crimea. When 
there, upon the first whistle of a bomb-shell, he 
was found by his superior officer, when he should 
have been deploying his company, trembling like 
an aspen leaf behind an embankment. In reply 
to questions asked him, he stated, that he had 
no taste whatever for such business, when the 
opinion becoming mutual, he was ordered to be 
drummed out of the army as a coward, and sent 
home to his father as one out of his place. Now, 
the preacher who has no taste for visiting is sadly 
out of his place. Had he accompanied the 
Saviour while on earth, his tastes would certainly 
have been subjected to many severe tests, for the 



PASTORAL VISITING. 189 

Saviour's public ministry was more than two 
thirds made up of personal intercourse and con- 
versation with those about him, while the asylums 
of wretchedness, the rendezvous of want and 
poverty, were his most common places of resort. 
Sleeping to-night in the house of Peter, to-mor- 
row night in that of Lazarus of Bethany, and 
spending the next in the mountains for prayer, 
are specimens of his itinerant pastoration. He 
began with the lower strata of society, and 
commenced to work up. The poor had the 
Gospel preached to them, and common people 
heard him gladly. How wise this philosophy 
that commenced its mission to the poor and to 
the common people. It is among them, that if 
reforms be not the most needed, all permanent 
reforms must begin. Pampered conservatism 
never does anything for the world. Those who 
are up in the world seldom care how the rest of 
it goes. We are not, then, to look among the 
high places of wealth and power for movements 
in favor of humanity. Earthquakes do not com- 
mence on the tops of mountains. There is no 
shaking of the heavens and the earth, in which 
the foundations are not fii^t moved. It is the 
common people whose respect, sympathies, love, 
and confidence, the pastor should first seek. 



190 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF EEVIYALS. 

And be who shuns the lowest spectacle of human 
wretchedness, who shuns annoying ignorance, 
who turns away from the low hovel of poverty, 
looks in, but scarcely deigns to enter the house 
of competence ; but seeks ease with book in hand 
upon the sofa of palatial riches, might better 
study, de novo^ the minister's great model, or else 
remember the example of the nobleman's son, 
as appropriate to himself. 

But, says another, how can I visit and study 
too ? In the first place, the lessons of the human 
heart, the phase of human condition you learn 
in visiting, constitute, as above intimated, an 
essential part of your studies, and with a proper 
husbandry of time, you can read books enough 
as well as to read hearts. If you have been so 
unfortunate as to enter the ministry prematurely, 
as to be destitute of an elementary knowledore 
of your profession, as we regret to say many 
have, you must contend with tliis difficulty as 
best you can. But it will not lessen it a whit to 
closet yourself in your library and forbear inter- 
coui*se with the people. If the great poet of 
nature could find 

'• Books in running brooks, 
Tongues in trees, sermons in stones, 
And ^ood in evervthino:'' 



PASTORAL VISITING. 191 

he must be a dull learner who cannot glean 
something through the week from the flashes of 
an anxious eye, from the throbbing of a hopeful 
or a sorrowful heart, from the tale of misfortune, 
the story of bereavement and buried love, which 
he may learn by intercourse with his flock, and 
which, mingled with the lessons of duty, of piety, 
or of Gospel promises, shall not infuse grace into 
his lips for the Sabbath, and make his words like 
the refreshing odors of the old sanctuary. As 
with the eyes of the fabled Argus, the pastor 
should scan the appearance of his flock, and seek 
at the earliest possible convenience, a personal 
acquaintance with each. What means that 
Scripture, where the shepherd who had a hun- 
dred sheep lost one of them ? The ninety and 
nine were temporarily abandoned, and the stray- 
ing member of the flock sought until it was 
found, borne home in triumph upon the shoulder, 
and thus the number kept good. The preacher 
who works for a revival and neglects the pas- 
toral work, is a workman that needeth to be 
ashamed. 



192 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVH^ALS. 



CHAPTER XXIL 

PASTORAL VISITINa. 

PASTORAL AND SOCIAL VISITING — THE PASTOR THE COMMON 

PROPERTY OF ALL — BEING INSTANT IN SEASON THE SICK 

ROOM EMERGENCES — DEATH IN A FAMILY FUNERAL 

SERMONS DUE REFERENCE TO BE HAD TO THE CUSTOMS OF 

SOCIETY. 

We would distinguish between pastoral and 
social visiting. Nor do we see any necessity why 
the pastor should forego the usual pleasures and 
proprieties of the social circle. We would not 
be fastidious here. Our Saviour performed his 
first miracle at a festive and highly social occa- 
sion. But while the Saviour thus revealed his 
true character amid, perhaps, the exuberance of 
hilarity, if not mirth, so a minister on any social 
occasion where he may chance to be a guest, 
should never lose sight of his true character ; 
and on all social occasions in which a minister 
may appropriately engage, the circle should never 
be broken up without proposing prayer. ISTor 
would we deprive the minister's family of the 
privilege of choosing their own associates with 



PASTORAL VISITING. 193 

becoming propriety, just because it becomes the 
head of that family to become all things to all 
men. The law of caste, to a greater or a less de- 
gree, obtains in all conditions of society ; and as 
it respects intimate social intercourse, not always 
without propriety. But the preacher, as a pas- 
tor, belongs to no caste or class ; he is neither an 
aristocrat nor a democrat. The most refined and 
the most elevated in society will only esteem him 
the more highly by knowing that his earliest at- 
tentions are given to those in the lowliest walks 
of life. If they estimate his character properly, 
they will expect to find him the most frequently 
where his services are the most needed. He is 
governed by none of those distinctions in society 
that are so wont to obtain. He is equally the 
honored guest of education, opulence, and power; 
though yesterday, like Doctor Clarke, he dined on 
potatoes in a mud hut with one of his delighted 
parishioners. Here is he furnished with a pecu- 
liar and unconfined power of usefulness. 

Nor do we mean, by pastoral visiting, those 
hasty professional calls made by some, and which 
pass under that name. We have known some 
preachers whose object seemed to be to see how 
many families they could call upon in the short- 
est given time possible. One young brother 

13 



194 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

boasted to us once that he had made ten pas- 
toral visits in an hour, and prayed in every 
house. We have no confidence in such a course. 
Such visits are mere official and dead, wanting 
in the living freshness of a sympathetic heart, 
and can do but little good. Nothing is more 
inappropriate or rude than an undue haste in the 
discharge of so holy a duty. But it may be ob- 
jected that great haste is necessary, or but few 
families can be visited. The answer to this ob- 
jection is, attach the importance to the work 
which it demands, commence in time. Visit a 
few families daily, and you will soon have the 
privilege of saying of your flock, " My sheep 
know my voice." 

Most especially should the pastor avail him- 
self of special occasions to be present in the fam- 
ilies of his parishioners. Has some misfortune 
befallen one of them ? Let him be the first to 
tender condolence and sympathy, and suitable 
lessons of submission. Sickness, it may be, with 
her wan countenance, her sunken, sallow eye, 
her skeleton frame, her nights of restlessness 
and painful vigils, her bitter herbs and pungent 
agonies, may have become the dread inmate of 
a family. Its head, perhaps, may be slowly 
sinking into the grave, or some favorite son, to 



PASTORAX, VISITING. 195 

whom health seemed almost guaranteed, may 
have been suddenly smitten down by a dire ail- 
ment ; or a lovely daughter, the pride and hope of 
the family, may have become a victim of that 
slow, but certain slaughterer of worth and beauty, 
the consumption. Here is a household of heavy 
hearts, a house whose rooms are dark at noon, 
and, over whose threshold the foot learns to 
fall with lightened tread. Here a fond mother 
strives to suppress her grief by the side of pain 
and pining love, but hastens away to her closet 
to weep and to pray. Now right here it is that 
the preacher should hear the voice once spoken 
to the Saviour, " Behold, he whom thou lovest 
is sick.'' And, like that precious Saviour, he 
should hasten in due time to mingle the tears of 
his sympathy with grief and bereavement. It 
was over a scene of sickness and death that it is 
recorded of Jesus, " He w^ept." Good seed may 
be sown here with a most sanguine hope of a 
fruitful harvest. There is nothing like the loss 
of health to make one feel the worthlessness of 
the world. Men will look up when drowning. 
There is no cordial to the sick like that of the 
frequent attention of a beloved friend. In this 
dark day his heart is to be won, and the preacher 
who cares both for my soul and body, who, 



196 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

Christ-like, is touched with the feelings of my 
infirmities, will exert over me an omnipotent 
power. How easily and appropriately, too, can 
that pastor, when acquainted with the wants of 
that sick family, bring their cases before God in 
his prayers in the pulpit, and thus bend the 
whole social heavens of the neighborhood in 
sympathy over them. What efi*ect will such at- 
tentions have upon a wayward son of that fam- 
ily? Long will the remembrance of it linger 
like the fragrance of grace in the memories of 
the survivors of that family after the pastor is 
gone. If visiting the sick is written by inspira- 
tion as a fruit of pure and undefiled religion on 
the part of Christians in common, what is to be 
thought of the pastor who would not make a 
special exertion to pray by the bedside of the 
sick, and to be ranked among the most active 
sympathizers ? It may sometimes happen that 
bread literally, as well as bread spiritually, is 
needed at the house of the sick. Few can make 
these delicate discoveries better than the faithful 
pastor ; and if it be not in his immediate power 
to supply the want, he possesses special ability 
to influence the action of others. It is scarcely 
less necessary at times to win souls to Christ by 
loaves and fishes than by expostulations %nd pray- 



PASTORAL VISnTNG. 197 



4 



ers. The two must often go together. As taught 
in our Discipline, and indicated in our love- 
feasts, the Church should take care of her poor ; 
and pastoral visitation is essential to the dis- 
charge of this duty. Let the preacher, then, 
who would slowly but surely accumulate a re- 
vival force in his flock ; who would combine all 
those elements of force into one glorious whole, 
and win a victory to his Lord, study well the 
momentous duty of pastoral visiting ; study it 
in its principles and in its details ; study well 
when and how these visits will be made the most 
effectual, remembering that man's extremity is 
God's opportunity. 

A death in a family is a voice from eternity. 
There is no grief so utterly annihilating as that 
of funeral grief By the side of the grave of 
buried love, one feels as he can feel nowhere 
else how like a frail bubble upon the billow are 
the fairest of human hopes. The hardest heart 
becomes as water when taking the last look at 
the coffin at the bottom of the grave, and listen- 
ing to those leaden sounds which arise on the ear 
when the first clods of the valley drop upon 
mortality's narrow house. It is said of afflic- 
tions, that they are to us as the darkness of the 
night, and that we would see no stars, and be 



198 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OP REVIVALS. 

ignorant of the majesty and magnificence of the 
heavens over us, but for such darkness. It is 
from out of the gloom of funeral sadness, that 
the most thoughtless can be induced to look up. 
Amid such emergences, then, let the pastor be 
present to point to the Star of Bethlehem. We 
have viewed with grief and surprise, a growing 
indiflference among some of our ministers to 
preaching at funerals. This is owing, in part, to 
a want of a due appreciation of the golden op- 
portunities w^hich they furnish to the pastor, and, 
in part, to an abuse of the institution. He who 
feels it his duty to preach an elaborate discourse 
of seventy minutes' length on every funeral occa- 
sion, is sadly wanting in a sense of the appro- 
priate, and with such a preacher, preaching 
at funerals will soon become irksome. Not so, 
we trust, with him who can always speak on such 
occasions, from fifteen to thirty minutes, and 
speak such thoughts as the inspiration of the 
occasion naturally suggests, and to a reflecting 
mind, will suggest in almost infinite variety. 

In pastoral visiting, we would not have the 
preacher overlook, or treat with recklessness, the 
customs and proprieties of life. It may not be 
equally proper for him to call upon the family 
at all hours of the day, and it may so happen 



PASTORAL VISITING. 199 

that he may call at times when he finds the 
family not in a fitting condition to receive him. 
The family may have been thrown into some 
confusion or hurry. Some of its members may 
be just on the eve of leaving, and it may be 
within a few minutes of car time, etc., etc. In 
such cases, let him not be obtrusive. Let him 
greatly modify his mission, or wave it altogether. 
Good sense, good taste, good manners, and deep 
piety, are the leading characteristics of a good 
pastor. 



200 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 



CHAPTER XXm. 

EXCITEMENT. 

METHODISTS NOT ALAKMED — EXCITEMENT FEARED BECAUSE IT 

CONFLICTS WITH A CREED SELDOM SUCCESSFULLY GUARDED 

AGAINST DEFINITION OF METHODISM — EXTRAVAGANCES DEP- 
RECATED EXCITEMENT ANALYZED FOUR CARDINAL SOURCES 

OF EMOTION — RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT ALWAYS WHOLESOME. 

Much is said about the danger of undue excite- 
ment in revivals of religion. With some, it is 
feared as the sin of witchcraft. As Methodists, 
we have never been as fearful and unbelieving 
on this subject as some of our neighbors. We 
have always believed that excitement is essential 
to revivals, and have not, from our experience, 
been induced to be so very apprehensive as to 
its consequences. The case might be very differ- 
ent, were we like many of our neighbors, em- 
barrassed by our creed in the case. If we be- 
lieved that no one was converted, only the 
"elect," and that when it pleased God, in his 
eternal sovereignty, to touch a heart by his 
Spirit, that a work was commenced, which 
would continue by an absolute certainty, and 



EXCITEMENT. 201 

that all others, who might give similar evidence 
of a disposition to fly from the wrath to come, 
if they apostatized, never had anything to apos- 
tatize from — we say, if we labored under this 
embarrassing creed, we should be very wary of 
excitement, and rather than to have the kingdom 
of heaven taken by violence, we would, like 
our brethren alluded to, desire to have it taken 
possession of in silence ; for it is really not a 
little embarrassing to those who hold to the 
creed, once in grace, always in grace, to witness 
publicly a number of conversions, and to witness 
these persons for a considerable length of time, 
giving precisely the same evidence of their con- 
version, exhibiting precisely the same spiritual 
phenomena, and yet, when a portion of them 
shall fall back into the world, to tell the world 
that these persons never had any religion, and 
that all the evidence they gave of the fact was 
deceptive, that they were either self-deceived, 
or, as hypocrites, they were deceiving others. 
Such declarations are apt to cause reflecting men 
of the world to come to some strange conclu- 
sions. They are apt to say, how, then, do we 
know that anybody is converted ? Our Calvin- 
istic friends, however, who would guard against 
excitement in revivals as if it were an epilepsy, 



202 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

have not been always able to do so. With 
nature and their creed at variance, tlie former 
has often triumphed, and revivals with sobs of 
distress, groans of anguish, and even shouts of 
joy, have richly favored their sanctuaries. 
Sometimes, the fearful and fastidious preacher 
has become alarmed, at other times angry, but 
much oftener has he melted under the Divine 
visitation, and flowed with the flood. 

So far as it concerns the compactness, the 
emphasis, the out-spokenness, and the social 
warmth and adhesiveness of Methodism, it is no 
more than regenerated Tinman nature acting it- 
self out naturally. We put on it no Procrustean 
trammel to conform it to a creed, nor does our 
sense of the befitting — our views of etiquette — 
close its lips to the loud " roaring" of penitential 
sorrow, or exultant shouting, when pardon brings 
relief. We view religion as an exciting theme, 
as one of the most exciting in the universe ; and 
to yield to men, without let or censure, the priv- 
ilege of becoming exceedingly excited on minor 
topics of the day, and to contend for the ab- 
sence of excitement on the all-momentous topics 
of religion, seems to us an absurdity. But it 
may be asked, whether extremes or extravagan- 
ces have not occurred under such a system. 



EXCITEMEKT. 203 

Well, in reply, we say, singular as it may seem, 
extremes and extravagances have occurred 
among our neighbors, just about as often, in pro- 
portion to the powerful revivals they have had, 
as among ourselves. They are probably, then, 
unavoidable, even with the exercise of the most 
prudent foresight. We honestly confess to their 
frequent existence, and have never seen a con- 
vulsed body under religious excitement, without 
more or less pain or apprehension. It has often 
turned out, however, much better than our 
fears, while the good that has resulted from re- 
vivals, even where these extravagances have 
been prominent, has so far exceeded the 
evil, that we have looked upon the latter, as 
spots on the sun. We would not, however, dis- 
courage the exercise of a prudent discipline 
here. There has, probably, been among us the 
workings of a superstitious fear. We have 
feared to curtail extravagances, lest we quench 
the Spirit. 

But is there not something peculiar to great 
excitement in revivals, which, in its ultimate 
results, endangers greatly the interests of relig- 
ion? We have never deemed, or seen any- 
thing peculiar about it. We think a rational 
analysis of the whole matter will allay all 



204 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 

rational fears. We know of but four cardinal 
sources of emotion in the human heart, namely : 
joy, sorrow, anger, appetite. Well, now, if 
there be so much danger, as some tell us, of in- 
flaming the passions, in seasons of revival, and 
being carried away with a tempest of animal 
fervor, to which of these great arteries of feeling 
is the exciting appeal made ? Certainly not to 
appetite, under which may be ranged epi- 
cureanism, lust, sensuality, etc., etc. Nor does 
it dangerously arouse, we think, the second great 
leopard of our nature. It does not make people 
hate one another. It does not instigate to wratli 
or prompt men to assault each other's persons. 
Anger and appetite, then, with all their numerous 
brood, are passions not excited in religious ex- 
citement. True, it does beget sorrow, profound 
sorrow, a " godly sorrow, that worketh repent- 
ance not to be repented of." This sorrow is a 
most healthy one. It arises from the discoveries 
which the sinner has made of himself. He is 
sorry for his sins, his depravity, and for having 
grieved so great grace. His sorrow may be very 
profound, and manifest itself in very high 
emotion. 

But can there be anything dangerous in 
such a class of emotions? The rather, do they 



EXCITEMENT. 205 

not embody everything that is hopeful ? A sor- 
row, too, that need not, under proper instruc- 
tion, be of long continuance. It is a false view 
of the philosophy of conversion, to suppose that 
it must necessarily be preceded by a long season 
of legal agony. Christ has made an atonement 
for our sins, and he invites us to come im- 
mediately to him, and demands of us no sor- 
row by way of penance. It is to see our sins, 
our guilt, our danger, and to feel our need of 
him, believe, and he is our Saviour. The smitten 
sinner merges from the profoundest grief, into 
the sweetest joy known to human nature, "peace 
with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ," and 
possessing the hope of eternal glory. Now, in 
all this, is it at all surprising if tears, and sobs, 
and shouts, and sighs, groans, and exultations, 
should become the natural language of the oc- 
casion ? But is there anything in all this class 
of emotions calculated to fill one with appre- 
hension in view of the excitement which char- 
acterizes revivals ? We think not. 

But there is another large stream of emotions 
that flow here, whose fountain we have not 
traced. There can be no joy where there is not 
love, and with love to God, arises an increased 
love for our fellows, and especially for kinsmen 



206 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

according to the flesh. The converted wife im- 
mediately feels a solicitude for her husband, too 
deep, it may be, for concealment. The converted 
child becomes at once a missionary to the parent. 
The converted sister is found at once praying 
and weeping for her wayward brother, and thus 
it is that all the loves of kindred are made to 
receive a powerful impulse. But is there any- 
thing to be apprehended from such an excite- 
ment as this, an excitement in which one dear 
relation is induced ardently to seek the best, 
highest, and holiest interest of another? Ex- 
citement in revivals I Yes, there is always ex 
citement present, the best, most wholesome of 
all excitement. If we could have a revival on 
earth without excitement, we could do more than 
the angels in heaven, for they rejoice over every 
sinner that repenteth. And as if their views of 
the matter harmonized precisely with ours and 
our experience, their solicitudes for the time 
being would forget a whole Church, and con- 
centrate upon one repenting, struggling sinner. 
'^I say unto you, that joy shall be in heaven 
over one sinner that repenteth, more than over 
ninety and nine just persons that need no repent- 
ance." O blessed revival excitement ! that calls 
into vigorous activity none but the noblest emo- 



EXCITEMENT. 207 

tions of our nature, and while it thrills the Churcb 
on earth with gladness and rapture, it has such 
an affinity for the skies, such a congeniality for 
the atmosphere of the angels' home, that it adds 
to their joys also. 



208 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVTVALS. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

HAVE FAITH m REVIVALS. 

REVIVALS SCRIPTTJRAL — THEIR SPIRIT FLOWS IN THE PRAYERS OP 
THE BIBLE, IN THE PROPHECIES OF THE BIBLE, IN THE PROMISES 

OF THE BIBLE, AND IN BIBLE HISTORY SECULAR HISTORY OF 

REVIVALS — REVIVALS AND METHODISM — A SOLECISM. 

The word revival implies its beginning-place. 
It intimates the existence of some religion, and 
the means of its promotion. It intimates the ex- 
istence of spiritual things, though they maj^ be 
ready to die. It intimates that the revival must 
commence in the Church, and may exist even 
without resulting in the conversion of souls. 
The word is Scriptural. And yet there are those 
who look upon revivals as not a necessity, view 
them as a kind of abnormal condition. Such 
brethren do exceedingly err, and they will be 
seldom favored with revivals for their want of 
faith in them. We would, if it were possible in 
this chapter, say something that would increase 
the confidence of all in revivals, and that would 
induce Christians continually to work for them, 
to work out not merely their own salvation, but, 



HAVE FAITH EST REVIVALS. 209 

as it were, the salvation of the Church, and 
others. If we glance at the history of revivals, 
we will find them of Bible origin, and that they 
breathe in the prayers of the Church; that they 
murmur among the strings of the prophets' lyres, 
and make up a large portion of the burden of 
Bible promises. What means such praying as 
this ? "Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause 
thine anger toward us to cease. Wilt thou not 
revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in 
thee ? Show us thy mercy. O Lord, and grant 
us thy salvation." Again : "Eeturn, we beseecii 
thee, O God of hosts ; look down from heaven, 
and behold and visit this vine and the vineyard 
which thy right hand hath planted, and the 
branch that thou madest strong for thyself." 
Again, hear the prophet Habakkuk : " O Lord, 
revive thy work. In the midst of the years 
make known ; in wrath remember mercy." 

Now, let us consult the prophets of the Bible 
concerning revivals. If we talk with these holy 
men, they will tell us stories of revival transform- 
ation, and rise before us in revival transport. 
Here is a description from Joel, of Pentecost, 
eight hundred years before it occurred : "And it 
shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out 

my Spirit upon all flesh ; and your sons and 
14 



210 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

your daughters shall prophesy, your old men 
shall dream dreams, your young men shall see 
visions: and also upon the servants and upon 
the handmaids in those days will I pour out my 
Spirit/' 

"With all this the promises of the Bible har- 
monize. " The wilderness and the solitary place 
shall be glad for them : and the desert shall re- 
joice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom 
abundantly, and rejoice, even with joy and sing- 
ing : the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto 
it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they 
shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excel- 
lency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak 
hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to 
them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear 
not: behold, your God will come with ven- 
geance, even God with a recompense ; he will 
come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind 
shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall 
be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap 
as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing; for 
in the wilderness shall waters break out, and 
streams in the desert. And the parched ground 
shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs 
of water; in the habitation of dragons, where 
each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. 



HAVE FAITH IN REVIVALS. 211 

And a highway shall be there, and a way, and 
it shall be called, The way of holiness ; the un- 
clean shall not pass over it ; but it shall be for 
those : the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall 
not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any 
ravenous beast shall go up thereon ; it shall not 
be found there; but the redeemed shall walk 
there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall re- 
turn, and come to Zion with songs and everlast- 
ing joy upon their heads : they shall obtain joy 
and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee 
away." 

The above glowing description of revival tri- 
umphs has, in all probability, been as yet but 
imperfectly realized. And from its teachings 
we may be justified in the inference that in- 
finitely greater revivals are yet to occur in the 
Church before the millennium, than ever have 
yet occurred. We are encouraged, then, at the 
beginning of every revival, to expect great 
things. Brethren, let us have faith in revivals. 

If we consult the Bible historically^ we will 
find many striking instances of revival manifes- 
tation and reformation. Keference might be had 
to the reigns of David and Solomon, Asa and 
Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah and Josiah. Look, also, 
at that great revival under Ezra, and then, again. 



212 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

under John the Baptist. Then, again, at the re- 
vival at Pentecost, in which no less than three 
thousand the first day, and two the second, were 
converted to God. The holy fire then caught 
in Samaria, and upon the dispersion of the disci- 
ples, after the martyrdom of Stephen, revivals 
broke out in the remoter parts of Judea, extend- 
ing as far as the territories of Greece. Indeed, 
the dawn of the Church's progress, as revealed in 
the Bible, seems to have been by means of re- 
vivals. Has it not been so ever since ? No fact 
is more easy of demonstration. The Church has 
always progressed, as it were, by revival steps. 
Especially true is this of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church. Take away that part of her history 
which appertains to revivals, and you have about 
annihilated lier history. Methodism moves for- 
ward by revivals with as stern a necessity, if not 
in as strict order, as doth the husbandman ac- 
quire his wealth by preparing for and then gath- 
ering his harvest in its season. Methodism with- 
out revivals ! Methodist preachers who do not 
believe in revivals ! Both are solecisms. 

"Were we to glance at the history of revivals 
since the great one under Luther, we would find 
that the pure faith of the Gospel caught in 
France, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, the Low 



HAVE FAITH IN REVIVALS. 213 

Countries, the mountains of Scotland, and north 
of Ireland, and in Britain by the revival law. 
And such has continued to be the fact in these 
countries ever since. At an early day, in this 
country, under the ministrations of "Whitefield, 
Coke, and Asbury, and their coadjutors ; also, 
Brainerd, the Edwardses, Davies, and the Ten- 
nents, the Church was saved from all the icy 
horrors of formalism by means of revivals. And 
but for the revivals that have characterized the 
first half of the present century, where had been 
the evangelism of America ? Could Methodism 
spare the moral wealth, the spiritual spoils, 
which she has gathered in revivals the last half 
century? Take them from her, and she would 
have nothing left. And when Methodism seeks 
not, by the most direct means, the promotion of 
revivals, when her attention shall be so directed 
to the externals of the Church, the mere scaf- 
folding, as to forget these weightier matters of 
the law, then is Ichabod written upon her walls. 
Her glory is departed and given to another. 
Yes, we say, given to another. For Methodism 
in some form, and under some name, will con- 
tinue to exist, if it be true that the millennium 
is to come. 



214 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REYIVALS. 



CHAPTEE XXY. 

HOLINESS. 

DISTINCTIONS JlSH DEfi.MTiONS — THE THING AND NOT THE 

MODE TO BE INVESTIGATED AGREEMENT AS IT RESPECTS THE 

THING IN ESSENCE DEFINITION GIYEN — TRUE STANDARD 

AROUND WHICH WE CAN HAHMONIZE QUESTIONS WHICH LIE 

BEYOND PROFITABLE INTESTIGATION THE THEORISTS SPE- 
CIAL 3tIEETINGS TO SEEK FOR CHRISTIAN HOLINESS — THE 

GRAND PECULIARITY ADVANCING FROM THE *' HOPE SO ^' TO 

THE " KNOW SO " — HOLINESS UNDER THE DIFFERENT DISPENSA- 
TIONS HOLINESS THE BIBLE^S LAST DEMAND UPON THE WORLD. 

The words holiDess, sanctlfication, perfection, 
etc., are used in Scripture in various shades of 
meaning. With Methodists \re believe they 
mean a death to sin ; the death of indweJling 
sin ; a resurrection to righteousness, accompanied 
with a consciousness of loving God with all the 
heart. Certain distinctions, however, have been 
set up, occasioning among us much dispute, such 
as the difference between regeneration and sanc- 
tification, where and when the latter begins, and 
what is implied in its completion. These and 
other distinctions have led to as many defini- 
tions as definers, and it is seldom that two writ- 



HOLINESS. 215 

ers agree on the subject of Christian holiness, 
where the mode of the thing's progress, rather 
than the thing itself, has been the subject of dis- 
cussion. Disputers have waxed warm, and even 
parties and sectional organizations have been 
temporarily created. Perhaps all will agree with 
us, that very little has been done by these dis- 
cussions to harmonize the views of the Church, 
while, in some instances, the Christian's spiritu- 
ality has been endangered. May it not be pos- 
sible that we exceedingly err in attempting to 
map out the process by which the justified sin- 
ner is advanced from incipient grace to perfect 
holiness in the fear of the Lord? Not more than 
a millionth part of what is to be known of the 
mysterious laws of electricity is yet, perhaps, 
known. Animal and vegetable chemistry, the 
science of crystallization, are all yet unexplored 
Africas in human thought. Why should we be 
so ready, then, to trace the way of the Eternal 
Spirit in its contact with our own souls, about 
which we have no knowledge whatever, beyond 
a consciousness of being ? Like little headlands 
far off in the ocean, that lift their rocky or sandy 
summits just above the surface, we know they 
are there, but what mysterious line of submarine 
Alps they may indicate, we may never know 



216 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

until " there shall be no more sea." Like these 
marine phenomena, we say, are some passages 
of holy writ. God breathed into the nostrils of 
Adam, and he became a living soul. Now here 
is a fact stated, but, like the little island summit 
of the ocean, it is surrounded by mystery which 
none may explain. The process of Omnipotence 
in the production of animal life, is as easily a 
thing of analysis, as the process of the Spirit in 
creating in man the newness of the spiritual 
life. Does not the Saviour place an embargo 
upon inquiries in this direction ? " The wind 
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the 
sound thereof, but canst not tell whence itcometh, 
and whither it goeth: so is every one that is 
born of the Spirit." " Who by searching can 
find out God?" "These things are too high for 
me, I cannot attain unto them." Is it not so 
dogmatic, so incapable of a demonstration to 
which all will agree, to attempt to show just 
how much or how little the Holy Spirit has 
done for our depravity, at this or that successive 
step in our spiritual history, that the work must 
ever be an unprofitable one ? Eather let us speak 
of the thing ^ and abandon disputation on the mode. 
Who ever knew a sharp controversialist on the 
subject of the mode of Christian holiness, that did 



HOLINESS. 217 

not give evidence, before he got throngh, that he 
wrote far less from experience than from theory ? 
But is there no way to define this blessed 
grace, so that Christians may have an entity to 
think of, and not be bewildered by those floating, 
contradictory definitions that have but too often 
entered into the writings and teachings of indi- 
viduals of the Church ? There is, thank God. 
As Methodists, we all agree as to what the 
grace is in essence. " It is to love God with all 
thy hearty mind^ and strength^ and thy neighbor 
as thyself P Here is Christian holiness, sancti- 
fication, perfection. Show us a man wliose 
heart habitually glows with emotions so heav- 
enly, and we care not to ask him how, or when, 
or where he received the blessing. In minute- 
ness of detail he may not know himself In our 
view, we have no idea that Christians generally 
do, and yet may they be as conscious of this 
blessing, as of any other feeling apprehensible 
by consciousness. Here, then, is a definition of 
the Saviour. Let us harmonize around it. Let 
us view it as an ultimate truth, as the ultimatum 
of our knowledge in the matter. Theories and 
speculations aside, let us seek to know that 
God is supremely loved, and then are we 
supremely blessed. 



218 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF BEVIVALS. 

If we lose sight of the polar star above named, 
we will find ourselves perpetually involved in 
questions that only bewilder, and which multiply 
words without knowledge. May not questions 
underlie this subject equally profound with 
many which might be mentioned, the solution 
of which, good men are willing to wait the dawn 
of eternity's light ? The mystery of the origin 
of evil, for example. How the immense deluge 
of moral and physical sufiering that surges so 
indiscriminately in the world, can be harmo- 
nzied with an all-presiding benevolence ; how 
Providence can support a kingdom of order in 
the world, and bring about every event accord- 
ing to the foreknowledge and counsels of his 
will, and yet man be absolutely free ; how pre- 
science can be reconciled with human freedom, 
are all questions which seem to lie beyond the 
limits of successful investigation. He who is 
perpetually puzzling himself about them, to the 
neglect of the weightier matters of the law, re- 
sembles the old Jews, who wandered in the des- 
erts of Arabia with a sunny Canaan, with golden 
fruit inviting their possession, just at hand. Do 
not treat the subject of holiness metaphysically. 
Do not theorize until you become transcendent- 
al. Do not establish a train of notions of your 



HOLINESS. 219 

own, and defend them nntil the spirit of bigotrj, 
if not Phariseeism, takes possession of j^our soul, 
and you subject yourself to the oft-heard cen- 
sure, that those who talk most about Christian 
holiness, seem to be most wanting in the posses- 
sion of the spirit of it. There are limits to 
human knowledge, and the circle with the most 
knowing is very limited. 

Revival preaching should insist on Christian 
holiness. It should set up the standard we have 
named. It should insist upon the definition of 
Jesus. It should neither ask nor want any better. 
Its vocabulary should be Scriptural. Away here 
with human inventions ; such words and phrases 
as " entire consecration," seeking the " second 
blessing," etc., etc. We have been often asked 
our views in reference to the propriety of hold- 
ing meetings specially for Christian holiness. 
They may not have been without their use. In 
our view, however, they are generally of doubt- 
ful propriety. We should seek to promote Chris- 
tian holiness at every meeting. Besides, there is 
a kind of solecism of language here. A meeting 
to seek for Christian holiness cannot, when 
justly analyzed, be any other than a meeting in 
which Christians are seeking more religion, for 
Christian holiness is the sum of all religion, 



220 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 

generic of the whole thing. But as this defi- 
nition would give such a meeting no marked 
character, it will generally be found that those 
circles of brethren who hold such meetings, 
have some particular theory to support. They 
are in possession of some new view upon this 
subject, in contradistinction to their brethren. 
They reduce the subject of Christian holiness, 
which is generic to something which is specific. 
They proceed in the wrong direction. In the 
place of advancing from species to genera, they 
proceed from genera to species. The results are 
seldom satisfactory. Besides, why not hold 
special meetings for an increase of faith, hu- 
mility, etc. ? 

We offer the above remarks on this delicate 
subject, with the profoundest deference to the 
judgments and more extended experiences of our 
brethren. While we are opposed to singleizing 
or technicalizing this blessed doctrine among us, 
after some of the modes above hinted at, we 
nevertheless believe in giving it marked promi- 
nence in all our worship and religious teachings. 
If the doctrine be not peculiar to Methodists, we 
have always held it peculiarly. In theory, our 
neighbors may believe in the possibility of lov- 
ing God with all the heart, but, in bondage to 



HOLINESS. 221 

their creeds, they will not assume to confess it. 
With them conversions are "hopeful." They 
" hope that they have obtained a hope." They 
hope that God is supreme in their affections, but 
will not trust to the evidence of consciousness 
and good works, to advance them to any further 
belief, to the perfect freedom of the sons of God. 
Methodists have advanced here from the hope 
so to the Jcnow so. Here is our grand peculiar- 
ity, and it should be ever held up before our 
people. Holiness, this has always been our 
watchword ; to spread it over all lands, our ob- 
ject. In this, we do no more than act Script ur- 
ally. If we look into the old dispensation, we 
will find lioliness, or moral purity, among the 
first inculcations of God. A hundred phj^sical 
objects that met the Jewish eye almost daily, 
had a tongue to speak to him of lioliness. The 
furniture of the tabernacle, and the vessels of the 
sanctuary, were eloquent with the theme. Proph- 
ecy speaks of its diffusion, and points to that 
period in its triumphs when "holiness to the 
Lord" would be stamped upon the bells of the 
herd. The Son of man came down from heaven, 
and among the first words of his mission were, 
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God." The great apostle to the Gentiles 



222 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 

takes up the blessed burden, and sends it rever- 
berating along the centuries. '' The very God 
of peace sanctify you wholly ; and I pray God 
your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be pre- 
served blameless unto the coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ.'' And at the closing up of revela- 
tion, the sealing up of the days of vision, a door 
is opened in heaven. The jasper- walled and 
golden-streeted Jerusalem is revealed, the me- 
tropolis of the saints ; and the closing words of 
the Bible are uttered down to the world from its 
entrance gates: ^•And there shall in no wise 
enter into it anything that defileth.'' Holiness ! 
it is the ark of the Lord among our doctriDal 
ideas. It is not the shibboleth of a sect, the 
dogma of a denomination, but it is " Christ in us 
the hope of glory." It is the veiy essence of oui' 
spiritual life, the vital artery of our whole sys- 
tem. It is the central sim around which the 
satellites all revolve in harmony, rejoicing in its 
broad, warm, genial, life-imparting smile. O, 
for holiness individually in the membership! 
O, for a holy ministry I Together, they make 
an omnipotent Church. '* Yerily I say imto 
you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, 
ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence 
to yonder place; and it shall remove: and noth- 



MfiX 



HOLINESS. 223 

ing shall be impossible unto you." We have 
often known revivals of religion to commence 
under the preaching of holiness, and though 
there are a diversity of operations, and the offi- 
ciating minister must be the judge of what is 
most fitting in the case, yet we have always 
considered it a safe place to begin. 



THE END. 



Si/ 







